MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

AND  OTHER  TENEMENT 

SKETCHES 

By 

Alvan    Francis    Sanborn. 


BOSTON 

COPELAXD  AND  DAY 


F.VIT.Ki;:  )    AivriRDiv,  T<>     ]]!K    ACT    i 

CONCKKSS       1\       TilK  YKAK       I-S'»5      l 

C:OIM-:I.A\II   AND   i>\\',  IN   'i' in;  OI-TII 

01-'     'i  in;     iri;K\uiAN  01-'     CON<;KK 

AT     ',VA>!II\r,TOV. 


TO 
MY    FATHER    AND     MOTHER 


PREFACE 

THE  chapters  that  follow  are  not  essays 
in  sociology.      How  should  they  be  when 
I  cannot,  for  the  life  of  me,  get  a  glimmering 
of  what  the   much-bandied  word,  sociology, 
means?     Still  less   are  they  literary  fancies. 
They  are  mere  transcripts  from  life.      I   have 
written  true  things,  simply,  about  poor  people. 
That  is  all. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

BECOMING  A  CHEAP  LOD<;ER  i 

MOODY'S  5 

A  FREE  BREAKFAST  22 

RIEEY'S  34 

THE  BED  I   KARXED  39 

JOE  C'jxx's  44 

I!KE\\STER'S  54 

WHITIXG'S  5  8 

THE  FAIRMONT   HOUSE  74 

APPRECL-VnOX  87 


A  TEXEMEXT  STREET  97 

A  TOUGH  ALLEY  149 

AMONG  THE  SANDWICH  MI^N  161 


SEVERAL  of  these  sketches  are  here  printed 
for  the  first  time.  Others  have  appeared  iu 
the  "Forum,"  the  "  New  York  Independent," 
and  the  Sunday  papers. 


BECOMING    A    CHEAP    LODGER 

THE  cheap  lodging-house  lias  been  de- 
fined as  a  place  in  which  "  beds  are  let 
out  by  the  night  (or  by  the  week)  in  rooms 
where  three  or  more  persons,  not  belonging  to 
the  same  family,  may  sleep  at  the  same  time." 
Boston  lodging-house  prices  have  no  bottom 
limit.  A  bed  may  be  had  for  seven  cents  or  for 
two  hours'  work  ;  a  canvas  strip  or  a  settee  for 
five  cents  ;  and  a  piece  of  a  floor  for  nothing. 
Fifteen  cents,  however,  is  the  standard  price 
for  a  bed.  Twenty  cents  ensures  a  more 
comfortable  bed  nearer  the  ground;  and 
twenty-five  cents,  a  box-like  arrangement 
open  at  the  top,  with  just  enough  space  for 
a  single  cot. 

The  best  way  to  get  at  the  cheap  lodging- 
house  life  is  to  live  it,  —  to  get  inside  the 
lodging-house  and  stay  inside.  For  this,  un- 
less one  possesses  a  mien  extraordinarily 
eloquent  of  roguery  or  misery,  or  both,  a 
disguise  is  helpful. 

I  bewail  bv  sacrificing  most  of  the  hair  on 


2         MOODV'S    LODGING    HOl'SK 

my  head  —  to  preclude  insect  ambuscades  — 
and  my  mustache,  and  by  going  unshaven 
for  about  ten  days.  When  the  time  for 
going  out  came,  I  thoroughly  grimed  face, 
hands,  and  neck,  donned  several  suits  of 
worn,  soiled  underclothes  (several  for  warmth 
and  armor),  a  pair  of  disreputable  pantaloons, 
a  jacket  out  at  elbows,  clumsy  t  discolored 
shoes,  and  a  hat  that  was  almost  a  disguise 
in  itself.  In  certain  finishing  touches  I 
took  a  genuine  artistic  pride;  these  were  a 
dingy  red  flannel  fastened  around  the  neck 
with  a  safety-pin,  a  clay  pipe  filled  with  vile- 
smelling  tobacco,  a  cheap-whiskey  breath,  a 
shambling  gait,  and  a  drooping  head.  Such 
luxuries  as  gloves  and  overcoat  were,  of 
course,  abjured,  though  it  was  severe  winter 
weather. 

To  enter  a  lodging-house  the  first  night 
and  ask  for  a  lodging  was  no  easy  thing. 

Arrived  before  the  building,  I  was  seized 
with  a  great  diffidence  such  as  might  lay  hold 
of  a  countryman  before  being  ushered  into 
a  city  drawing-room.  I  felt  myself  hope- 
lessly underbred.  My  parents  and  teachers 
had  anticipated  no  contingency  of  this  sort. 
Plainly  enough,  I  did  not  possess  the  sa:'dr- 
fairc  the  occasion  demanded.  \\  hat  was  I 
to  say  and  what  was  I  to  do  once  I  was 
within?  Back  and  forth,  past  the  entrance, 


BECOMING  A  CHEAP  LODGER      3 

I  walked,  "screwing  my  courage  up,"  like  Bob 
Acres.  I  do  not  know  that  my  courage 
increased  ;  but  the  cold  increased,  and  it  was 
that  which  finally  drove  me  from  the  side- 
walk. 

"  Some  folks,"  an  old  lady  friend  of  mine 
used  to  say,  "  are  very  much  like  other  folks." 
Lodgers,  like  other  folks,  are  of  two  kinds,  — 
those  who  talk  and  those  who  do  not  talk. 
At  first,  as  being  safer,  I  joined  the  ranks  of 
the  reticent,  took  a  seat  a  little  in  the  shadow, 
lit  my  pipe  with  a  paper  spill  (no  veteran 
ever  uses  a  match),  and  frankly  told  any- 
one who  spoke  to  me  to  go  to  the  devil. 
Listening  elicits  quite  as  much  desirable 
and  novel  information  as  questioning,  and 
arouses  no  suspicions  ;  is,  in  fact,  one  of  the 
peculiarly  blessed  privileges  of  this  sort  of 
existence. 

The  lodging-house  makes  over  the  out- 
ward man  in  a  single  night,  and  thereafter  no 
dramatic  effort  need  be  made.  The  lodging- 
house  odor  never  lies.  A  parched  and  itching 
skin,  a  foul-tasting  mouth,  smarting  eyes,  a 
"  big  head,"  and  a  raging  thirst  make  a  man 
look  seedy  and  wretched,  and  make  him  talk 
and  act  as  he  looks,  nolens  rolcns. 

Living  does  away  with  the  necessity  of 
playing  at  living. 

I  was  amazed  and  not  a  little  disquieted  to 


4         MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

find  myself,  after  a  spell,  quite  at  home  in  the 
lodging-house.  I  did  not  really  become 
callous  to  the  physical  discomforts  of  the 
situation,  but  I  discovered  that  a  moderate 
love  of  adventure,  adaptability  to  unusual 
surroundings,  and  an  appreciation  of  the  fun 
there  is  in  human  nature  will  make  up  fur 
almost  any  amount  of  physical  discomfort, 
—  and  that  comes  to  very  much  the  same 
thing. 

"  Humming "  -  I  may  say  it,  I  trust, 
without  offensive  assurance  —  is  as  wretched 
a  condition  as  I  am  likely  to  lapse  to. 
"  Bums  "  arc,  by  general  consent,  the  very 
dregs  of  society.  Is  it  not,  then,  worth  a  bit 
of  suffering  to  feel  certain  that  the  very  worst 
that  can  befall  you  (in  the  world's  view)  is 
not  so  very  bad  after  all?  It  surely  is  well 
to  know  that  life  will  still  be  an  endurable 
thing,  even  if  you  have  to  live  it  as  a  lodging- 
house  bum.  With  such  knowledge  you  may 
snap  your  fingers  in  Fortune's  verv  eyes. 
Almost,  you  may  venture  to  tweak  her  by 
the  nose. 


MOODV'S 

AT  the  North  End  of  Boston,  on  a  street  of 
sombre  warehouses,  is  a  unique  lodging- 
house,  which  serves  as  a  beggars'  headquar- 
ters. Its  stone  front  differs  in  no  respect 
from  the  other  stone  fronts  of  the  street, 
except  that  it  bears  a  transparency  (lighted 
at  night)  with  the  simple  legend,  MOODV'S. 

The  first  floor  is  occupied  by  a  ship  chand- 
ler and  the  second  by  the  Moodys.  It  is 
the  tutelage  of  the  Moodys,  rather  than  the 
fact  of  its  being  a  beggars'  headquarters,  that 
makes  the  place  unique. 

Only  the  two  upper  floors  are  open  for 
lodgers.  Tom,  the  head  of  the  Moody 
family,  seldom  shows  himself  on  the  upper 
floors.  Mrs.  Tom,  and  Mrs.  Tom's  daughter, 
Miss  Lizzie,  run  the  lodging-house,  it  ma}'  be 
as  a  farmer's  "women  folks"  ofttimes  run 
the  hen-house,  —  for  what  pin-money  they 
can  get  out  of  it.  Everything  is  done,  to  be 
sure,  as  from  Tom,  and  such  threats  as  have 
to  be  made  are  always  made  in  Tom's  name  ; 


6        MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

but  the  only  other  evidence  of  Tom's  exist- 
ence is  his  occasional  appearance  on  the 
stairs  at  the  dinner  hour. 

Mrs.  Tom  is  a  fat,  fierce,  spectacled 
matron,  who  still  dresses  in  the  style  of  her 
young  womanhood.  She  it  is  who,  receiviiTg 
warning  of  any  approach  through  a  glass 
partition,  intercepts  all  new-comers  at  the 
head  of  the  first  flight  of  stairs,  and  forces 
them  to  register  and  pay  in  advance  for  a 
night,  before  climbing  higher.  Habitues  she 
knows  by  sight,  and  for  them  she  unbars  the 
door  without  leaving  her  cooking  or  sewing, 
by  pulling  a  string  attached  to  the  latch. 

Miss  Lizzie  is  a  round-faced,  soft-skinned, 
rosy-cheeked,  black-haired  maiden  of,  per- 
haps, forty,  to  whose  child-face  a  pair  of 
steel-bowed  spectacles  lends  a  look  of  owlish 
wisdom.  She  is  "  the  girl "  of  the  family 
still,  and  will  be,  so  long  as  the  old  folks 
live.  She  is  almost  as  broad  as  long,  quivers 
all  over  like  a  jelly-fish,  and  has  neither  form 
nor  feature  —  no  waist,  no  neck,  no  wrists, 
no  ankles,  no  chin,  and  no  nose  to  speak  of. 
Her  only  visible  garment  is  an  enormous, 
bright  pink  sleeve-apron.  Indeed,  but  for 
her  glossy  black  hair,  about  which  a  vestal 
fillet  of  yellow  silk  is  bound,  Miss  Lizzie 
could  hardly  pass  for  anything  but  a  pulpy 
pink  cylinder. 


MOODY'S  7 

At  Moody's,  card-room,  parlor,  smoking- 
room,  reading-room,  dining-room,  lavatory, 
and  office  are  one  room,  called,  for  short, 
"The  office."  "  The  office  "  is  small.  It  is 
nearly  square.  It  overlooks  a  street  and  a 
harbor.  It  has  tiny-paned  windows,  whose 
dinginess  gives  to  both  views  an  artistic  effect 
of  haze.  The  floor  may  have  been  washed  ; 
it  has  certainly  never  been  painted.  The 
walls  and  ceiling  are  a  close  match  for  the 
floor  in  color,  in  spite  of  clinging  traces  of 
whitewash.  The  centre-piece  is  a  stove,  gray 
from  old  age  or  overheating.  In  front  of  the 
stove  is  a  single  yellow  settee.  A  broad,  low 
shelf,  quite  around  the  four  walls,  provides 
all  the  other  seating  capacity  needed.  These 
simple  furnishings  more  than  satisfy  the 
wants  of  the  guests  at  Moody's.  They  are  an 
object-lesson  which  zealous  apostles  of  greater 
simplicity  in  life  would  do  well  to  study. 

Moody's  beds  cost  ten  and  fifteen  cents 
per  night.  The  ten-cent  beds  are  in  vertical 
tiers  like  the  bunks  of  a  ship.  The  fifteen- 
cent  beds  are  cots.  No  pretence  is  made  of 
keeping  them  clean  or  free  from  vermin,  but 
the  mattresses  are  fairly  soft,  and  there  are 
quilts  enough  for  the  coldest  weather. 

About  five  o'clock  every  night  a  careful 
search  is  made  for  stowaways.  When  that  is 
completed,  Miss  Lizzie  comes  upstairs.  She 


8         MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSK 

prompt!}'  clears  the  office  of  all  who  have  not 
paid  below,  and,  standing  in  the  doorway, 
very  much  on  her  dignity,  exacts  money 
from  each  man  before  he  is  allowed  ^lo  pass 
by  her.  Sometimes  a  few  pockets  are  empty, 
but  I  have  never  seen  an  ejection  on  that 
account.  Some  one  is  certain  to  come  to  the 
rescue  with  at  least  a  dime. 

In  the  office,  the  whole  "gang"  holds 
carnival  almost  every  night  through  the 
winter,  and  here  some  of  "the  gang"  may 
be  seen  at  any  hour  of  the  day.  "  The  gang  " 
(I  name  only  the  leading  spirits)  are,  Gits, 
Scotty,  Billy,  Saucer,  Barney,  Shorty,  Doc, 
Honey,  Charcoal,  Bottles,  Ratter,  Patlier,  and 
The  Professor. 

"  Gus "  is  a  gentleman  bum.  He  is  a 
smooth  talker,  well  informed,  who  some- 
how manages  to  keep  himself  respectably 
dressed.  In  his  favorite  character  of  a  re- 
duced merchant  he  could  deceive  the  prince 
of  deceit  himself.  Urbanity  is  so  natural  to 
Gus  that  it  appears  even  in  his  ordinary 
lodging-house  relations — where  it  is  not  at 
all  needed.  I  remember  distinctly  the  beauti- 
ful politeness  with  which  lie  apologixed  one 
afternoon,  when  he  woke  me  from  a  sound 
sleep  merely  to  ask  me  for  a  match.  A  lady 
disguises  an  inevitable  yawn  with  a  jewelled 
hand  or  a  dainty  fan.  Gus,  impelled  by  a 


MOODY'S  9 

kindred  sense  of  decorum,  always  pretends 
to  be  adjusting  a  non-existent  garter  or  a 
suspender,  when  he  is  goaded  to  scratching 
by  an  uncommonly  virulent  bite.  Either  his 
manners  or  his  intelligence  would  be  adequate 
to  the  most  exclusive  circles  of  the  city. 

"  Scotty, "  red-headed,  red-whiskered, 
canny  S cutty,  has  been  a  bum  in  Scot- 
land, and  is  well  versed  in  the  rites  and 
traditions  of  the  Scottish  Order.  He  has 
seen  a  good  bit  of  the  world,  having  been, 
among  other  things,  in  the  English  military 
service  in  Africa.  He  sings  rollicking 
snatches  from  Burns'  "  Jolly  Beggars,  " 
dances  the  Highland  fling  divinely,  and  de- 
claims "  Tarn  o'  Shanter  "  with  true  Scotch 
spirit.  Scotty  is  far  too  versatile  an  artist  to 
confine  himself  to  any  one  "  dodge,"  but  he 
is  generally  soliciting  funds  to  get  him  back 
to  his  wife,  dying  of  consumption  in  Scot- 
land—  not  because  this  is  his  cleverest  dodge, 
but  because  it  is  the  one  that  pays  best. 

"Billy"  is  a  religious  bum.  The  ex- 
pression of  Billy's  face  is  prcternaturally 
solemn ;  his  voice  is  as  though  his  throat 
were  a  tomb,  and  his  skin  is  a  corpse-yellow, 
his  blood  being,  on  his  own  admission,  "  all 
turned  to  water  through  the  booze."  Billy 
on  the  mourner's  bench  is  a  sight  worth  going 
far  to  see. 


io       MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

"  Saucer,"  being  of  English  birth,  has  taken 
pains  to  learn  the  address  of  nearly  every  Eng- 
lishman in  Boston  and  vicinity.  In  making 
his  appeal,  he  tells  a  pitiful  story  of  having 
been  sandbagged  and  robbed  immediately 
on  landing  in  New  York,  and  curses  the  day 
he  left  his  England.  Saucer  has  been,  to 
a  degree,  my  pal,  and  a  very  good  fellow  he 
is.  Should  I  ever  be  forced  to  bum  in 
earnest,  I  could  ask  no  truer  friend. 

"  Barney,"  thanks  to  a  rich  Irish  brogue, 
gets  money  and  sympathy  galore  from  his 
transplanted  countrymen.  Perhaps  this  is 
the  reason  Barney  always  rallies  to  the  de- 
fence of  the  police  when  the  rest  of  the  gang 
abuse  them. 

"Shorty"  (six  feet  two)  seems  to  have 
been  a  genuine  workingman  originally.  If 
his  own  (unprofessional)  story  is  to  be  be- 
lieved, he  was  kicked  out  of  a  job  by  the 
"  dirty  spite  "  of  a  petty  overseer.  Xow 
nothing  could  induce  him  to  take  up  the  life 
of  a  workingman  again.  He  finds  that  bum- 
ming is  easier  and  pays  better,  and  does  not 
leave  a  man  at  the  mercy  of  an  unscrupulous 
overseer's  caprice.  Professionally,  Shorty  is 
a  shoemaker  trying  to  get  to  a  job  that  has 
been  offered  him  in  a  distant  town. 

"  Doc  "  is  a  veteran  of  pure  Yankee  breed, 
with  a  <rift  of  nasal  eab  which  he  turns  to 


MOODY'S  1 1 

practical  account,  occasionally,  in  selling 
quack  medicines  by  torchlight,  but  oftenest  in 
simple,  whining  begging.  When  Doc  comes 
in,  the  gang  settles  itself  for  a  treat.  The 
corner  grocery  loafer  of  the  golden  age  of 
corner  groceries  could  hardly  have  been  a 
match  for  Doc  in  story-telling.  Bawdy 
tale  chases  bawdy  tale  from  his  lips,  and 
every  tale  is  as  perfect  in  its  workmanship  as 
if  it  had  been  wrought  out  in  the  study  of  a 
Wilkins  or  a  De  Maupassant. 

In  fact,  Doc,  without  suspecting  it  in  the 
least,  is  a  consummate  literary  artist. 
Furthermore,  the  prophet  has  honor  in  his 
own  country;  his  talent  is  appreciated  by 
the  gang.  From  stories  the  Doctor  some- 
times goes  to  songs.  He  has  a  thin,  cracked 
voice,  but  in  rendering  the  spirit  of  a  song  he 
is  a  second  Chevalier.  Here  is  one  of  his 
refrains  : 

"  Just  a  little  hii^cr, 

Just  a  little  ruin, 
Just  a  tattered  suit  of  clothes, 
Just  a  diz/v  hum." 

Had  he  not  chosen  to  be  a  successful 
tramp,  Doc  might  as  easily  have  been  a  suc- 
cessful litterateur  or  comedian.  Who  dares 
question  his  choice? 

"  Hone}-,"  a  fat  and  grizzled  negro,  born 
and  bred  in  New  York  citv,  "  makes  a  good 


12       MOODVS    LODGING    HOUSE 

thing "  by  claiming  t  >  have  been  a  slave 
"  befo'  de  \vah."  He  boasts  at  Moody's  that 
he  has  never  done  a  whole  day's  work  in  his 
life,  but  such  a  boast  confers  no  great  dis- 
tinction there. 

"  Charcoal  "  is  an  ex-coalheaver  who 
keeps  himself  well  grimed  with  coal  dust  in 
order  to  pass  for  one  of  the  bojia  fide  unem- 
ployed. And,  as  a  matter  of  fact.  Charcoal's 
aversion  to  work  is  not  so  strong  that  he  will 
not  do  an  odd  job  now  and  then  for  the  sake 
of  a  "  booze." 

"Bottles,"  Charcoal's  pal,  whom  iv> 
emergency  can  force  to  work,  is  a  Bowery 
boy  who  has  condescended  to  pass  a  winter 
in  Boston.  He  is  quite  as  foul-mouthed  as 
the  Doctor,  without  the  Doctor's  saving  wit. 
His  yarns  of  the  way  his  Xew  York  gang 
were  wont  to  abuse  the  intoxication  of  the 
hags  about  the  wharves  of  the  Last  Side  by 
taking  turns  in  outraging  them,  drawing  lots 
for  the  turns,  may  have  been  fabrications  of 
his  filthy  mind  ;  but  they  wore  just  as  nause- 
ating to  hear  as  if  literally  true. 

Bottles  is  always  in  a  maudlin  condition  at 
the  close  of  the  day,  and  yet  always  has  some 
money  left  in  his  pocket.  1  le  brags  ot  being 
able  to  "  hustle  in  the  price  of  a  drunk  "  in 
no  time,  the  secret  of  this  facility  being  that 
so  much  liquor  as  would  make  an  average 


MOODY'S  13 

member  of  the  gang  barely  thirsty  will  make 
Bottles  glorious.  On  the  street  he  asks  for 
small  sums  only,  —  two  cents  to  make  up  five, 
or  three  to  make  up  ten.  Bottles  is  an 
amateur  prcstidigitateur,  and  it  is  no  end  of 
fun  to  see  him  snap  pennies  up  his  sleeve 
when  his  legs  are  so  unsteady  that  he  has 
to  be  braced  by  Charcoal  on  the  one  side 
and  Saucer  on  the  other. 

"Ratter"  begs  as  a  discharged  convict. 
He  is  such  a  monster  of  ugliness  to  look  upon 
that  housewives  and  servant  girls  generally 
give  him  what  he  asks.  Ratter's  fierceness 
is  all  on  the  surface,  however,  and  he  is  quite 
modest  in  his  demands.  He  has  been  to  "  The 
Island,"  to  be  sure,  —  who  of  the  gang  has 
not?  — buthe  is  passionately  fond  of  children, 
and  would  not  knowingly  hurt  a  kitten. 

"  Father  "  is  a  patriarchal  vagabond  very 
much  in  his  dotage.  He  seems  to  have  for- 
gotten everything  he  ever  knew  except  the 
begging  art.  He  goes  out  in  all  weathers, 
returns  at  exactly  five  o'clock,  and  sits  in  a 
corner  resting  his  head  on  a  stick  without 
speaking  a  word.  If  he  talks  at  all,  it  is  with 
his  feet.  These  are  constantly  moving.  May 
it  be  they  are  involuntarily  keeping  step  with 
the  march  of  time?  The  old  fellow  is  never 
imposed  upon.  In  fact,  the  gang  seem  to 
hold  his  venerable  stupidity  in  a  kind  of  awe. 


14       MOODV'S    LODGING    HOL'SK 

Many  so-called  respectable  families  treat  their 
aged  members  less  decently. 

"The  Professor"  rivals  Gus  in  gentility, 
but  not  in  intelligence  or  apparel.  Without 
being  many  years  older,  he  is  many  years 
farther  gone  into  seediness  — of  clothes  and 
mind.  The  Professor  was  blocked  out  by 
nature  for  a  great  man.  He  has  a  massive, 
intellectual  head  which  not  even  a  rusty, 
broken  derby  hat  vulgarizes ;  and  the  fact 
that  his  faded,  brown  overcoat  has  only  a 
safety-pin  for  a  fastening  does  not  destroy  his 
original  dignity.  His  left  hand  is  more  like 
a  twisted  root  than  a  hand,  and  for  this  dis- 
figurement, due  to  the  explosion  of  a  shell  at 
Cold  Harbor,  he  receives  a  pension. 

Gus  and  the  Professor  are  a  fine  pair 
of  decayed  Beau  Brummels.  They  are 
inseparable  friends,  and  such  courtliness  as 
they  display  when  they  exchange  confidences 
and  compliments  this  generation  is  rarely 
privileged  to  see.  "  I've  been  looking  all 
my  life  for  a  man,  and  now  at  last  I've  found 
one,"  is  apt  to  be  the  burden  of  the  Profes- 
sor's glorification  of  Gus. 

One  forenoon  they  solemnly  ''  swore  off 
the  drink  "  together.  They  had  been  talking 
for  hours  in  a  serious  strain.  Gus  had 
even  recited  with  genuine  feeling  several 
little  poems  his  mother  had  taught  him. 


MOODY'S  15 

They  really  meant  to  do  better  —  there  is  no 
doubt  about  it.  But  unfortunately  it  was 
the  day  for  the  Professor's  pension-money, 
and  less  than  half  an  hour  after  that  was 
received,  the  swear-off  was  cancelled  by 
mutual  consent.  Billy,  on  the  promise  of  a 
good  drunk,  was  sent  out  again  and  again 
with  a  bottle,  and  each  time  he  returned  we 
were  all  invited  to  drink  by  the  hospitable 
Professor.  It  was  not  until  Billy  collapsed 
on  the  floor  that  the  symposium  came  to  an 
end,  and  then  not  through  lack  of  a  messen- 
ger, for  a  Hermes  could  have  been  found  who 
could  still  stand  upon  his  pins,  but  because 
there  was  no  more  pension-money.  Several 
of  the  gang  joined  Bill}'  on  the  floor.  Gus 
was  not  one  of  them.  He  was  alternately 
ecstatic  and  despondent.  His  ecstasy  was 
expressed  by  a  simple  refrain  : 


"  We'll  be  happv,  we'll  be  happy,  we'll  be  happy, 
When  the  sun  rises  in  the  morning.'' 


His  despondency,  by  a  single,  might}-  original 
oath,  I  may  not  quote.  For  more  than  two 
hours  nothing  came  from  him  except  the  oath 
and  the  song.  "  It's  always  so  with  Gus," 
the  boys  say,  "  when  he's  jagged." 

The  Professor  showed  more  versatility  in  his 
cups.      He  talked  glibly  and   grandiloquently 


1 6      MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

withal  on  a  score  of  profound  themes. 
As  often  as  he  raised  the  bottle  to  his  lips 
he  quoted  with  Epicurean  relish,  "  Eat,  drink, 
and  be  merry,  for  to-morro\v  ye  die,"  only  to 
lapse  the  next  minute  into  a  sympathetic  ex- 
position of  old-fashioned  New  England  Puri- 
tanism, which  he  interlarded  with  the  baldest 
vulgarity  and  profanity.  Nothing  but  drink 
could  bring  about  such  a  fusion  of  opposites. 

The  majority  of  the  gang  being  too  drunk 
or  too  comfortable  to  go  out  for  supper  that 
night,  they  made  shift  with  a  picked-up  meal 
—  a  little  dried  cheese,  a  few  crackers,  and  a 
piece  of  codfish — -scraped  together  by  a 
ransacking  of  pockets,  toasted  on  the  stove 
and  scrupulously  divided. 

There  was  just  such  another  jamboree  the 
evening  of  Election  Day,  an  occasion  that 
means  far  more  than  Christmas  to  the  men 
at  Moody's,  it  being  the  one  time  of  the  year 
when  they  are  choosers,  not  beggars. 

When  the  distress  of  the  winter  of  1893-4 
was  at  its  worst,  there  was  a  discussion  one 
night  of  the  causes  of  poverty. 

"  It's  a  man's  own  fault  ef  he's  poor;  I 
know  it  by  mesilf,"  said  Barney.  "  Didn't 
I  aften  blow  in  ten  or  fifteen  dollars  of  a 
Saturday  night  in  the  days  whin  I  was 
workin'  for  me  livin'  ?  Shu  re,  I  know  it  by 
mesilf.  Ef  a  man  'ud  keep  a  holt  on  his 


MOODY'S  17 

wages  when  he  had  'cm,  he'd  never  ask  no 
help  of  no  man." 

"You're  right  there,  Barney;  I  know  it 
by  myself."  —  "  That's  so  ;  I  know  it  by  my- 
self," came  from  man  after  man,  until  it 
looked  as  if  the  whole  room  was  to  be  self- 
condemned.  At  last  there  was  a  protest. 

"  It  ain't  so.  I  know  it  by  myself  as  well 
as  you.  It  ain't  no  fault  of  mine  I'm  a  bum," 
and  the  protest  had  its  quota  of  supporters. 
Reasons  were  given.  Cases  were  cited  of 
people  who  were  made  poor  through  no  fault 
of  their  own, — by  the  treachery  of  friends, 
the  sharp  practice  of  lawyers,  the  brutality 
of  employers,  fire,  sickness,  death. 

A  diatribe,  the  same  night,  by  Ratter, 
against  prohibition,  did  not  call  out  a  single 
protest.  "  Prohibition  makes  a  town  dead," 
said  Ratter.  "  It  knocks  all  the  life  out  of 
it.  Take  Peabody  now.  Peabody  used  to 
be  a  right  good,  lively  town.  Billy  knows 
that's  so  just  as  well  as  me.  What  is  it 
now?  Dead  as  a  drowned  rat.  Since  they've 
had  prohibition  the  tanneries  and  everything 
have  moved  away.  It's  going  to  the  dogs 
about  as  fast  as  it  can,  and  all  on  account  of 
taking  away  the  boo/.e.  Prohibition  '11  take 
the  vim  out  of  the  best  town  going." 

Rumsellers  are  often  arraigned  for  inhu- 
manity. "  They'd  see  you  with  your  shoul- 


1 8       MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

dcr  frozen  to  a  cake  of  ice  before  they'd  give 
you  a  drink,  if  you  happened  to  be  busted, 
no  matter  if  you'd  been  buyin'  of  'em  for 
a  whole  year,"  is  the  accusation ;  but  the 
accusers  are  invariably  judicial  enough  to 
admit  that  "  there  are  rumsellers  and  rum- 
sellers."  and  that  "  a  good  manv  are  straight, 

o  «•  o 

white  men." 

Like  artists  the  world  over,  the  "  boys  "  at 
Moody's  luxuriate  in  shop-talk  when  they 
come  together  at  the  close  of  the  day.  From 
this  talk  it  appears  that  they  have  accurate 
knowledge,  not  only  of  charitable  organiza- 
tions and  charitable  individuals,  but  of  the 
vulnerable  points  of  both  organizations  and 
individuals  ;  also  that  they  take  as  keen  a 
delight  in  enlarging  upon  their  methods  as 
artists  do  in  discussing  the  processes  of  paint- 
ing. They  exchange  spoils  as  well  as  notes. 
Thus  Barney  came  in  one  night  so  fear- 
fully distended  that  the  Doctor  prophesied 
twins.  He  proceeded  to  pull  from  his 
pockets  undervests,  drawers,  and  stockings, 
which  he  had  been  collecting  all  the  after- 
noon on  the  strength  of  a  cunningly  devised 
talc  of  woe. 

He  sold  Ratter  the  stockings  for  the 
price  of  a  drink,  and  took  everything  else  to 
a  pawnshop. 

There    is   no   end  of  rough  horse-play  and 


MOODY'S  19 

good-natured  scuffling  at  Moody's.  I  have 
never  seen  a  fight  there ;  though  things 
have  occasionally  come  dangerously  near  it. 

A  stranger,  a  bona  fide  workingman,  ap- 
peared one  night  when  Charcoal  had  just 
enough  drink  in  him  to  be  irritable.  Before 
the  evening  was  over,  the  latter  somehow 
managed  to  pick  a  quarrel  witli  the  working- 
man,  who  nervously  protested  himself  a  man 
of  peace,  when  Charcoal  dared  him  to  fight. 
Charcoal  was  forced  to  a  seat  by  half  a  dozen 
of  the  gang,  and  the  man  of  peace  left  the 
office.  Miss  Lizzie  almost  instantly  ap- 
peared on  the  scene  and  warned  Charcoal  to 
behave  himself  or  leave  the  house.  Plain!}-, 
the  man  of  peace  was  also  a  sneak.  He  had 
"peached"  at  headquarters. 

It  was  superb  to  see  the  scorn  that  met  him 
on  his  return  to  the  office,  —  a  scorn  in  which, 
I  confess,  I  shared.  Charcoal's  rage  had 
quickly  given  way  to  contempt.  The  man 
had  fallen  quite  below  his  notice,  and  he  ex- 
pressed a  lively  regret  for  ever  having  done 
him  the  honor  of  a  challenge  to  a  fair  fight. 
Sensing  the  situation,  the  man  of  peace  left 
the  office  and  sat  on  the  steps  outside  until 
bed-time.  In  the  morning,  he  had  dis- 
appeared. 

Notice  how  much  the  life  of  the  gang  at 
Moody's  resembles  that  described  by  Piers 


20      MOODV'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

Ploughman  five  hundred  years  ago  :  "  Hav- 
ing no  other  church  than  the  brew-house  ; 
filling  their  bags  and  stomachs  by 
lies,  sitting  at  night  over  a  hot  fire,  when  they 
untie  their  legs  which  have  been  bound  up 
in  the  day-time,  and  lying  at  ease,  roasting 
themselves  over  the  coals  and  turning  their 
backs  to  the  heat,  drinking  gallantly  and 
deep,  after  which  they  draw  to  bed  and  rise 
when  they  are  in  the  humor.  Then  they 
roam  abroad  and  keep  a  sharp  lookout  where 
they  may  soonest  get  a  breakfast  or  a  rasher 
of  bacon,  money,  or  victuals,  and  some- 
times both,  .  .  .  and  contrive  to  live  in 
idleness  and  ease  by  the  labors  of  other 
men.  They  observe  no  law  nor  marry  any 
woman  with  whom  they  have  been  connected. 
They  beget  bastards,  who  are  beggars  by 
nature." 

The  following  relic  of  the  sixteenth  century 
is  strangely  like  Shorty's  begging  story: 

"My  name  is  Nicolas  Genings,  and  I  come 
from  Lecester  to  seke  worke,  and  I  am  a 
hat-maker  by  my  occupation,  and  all  my 
money  is  spent,  and,  if  1  coulde  get  money 
to  pave  for  my  lodging  this  night,  I  would 
scke  worke  tomorrowe  amongst  the  hatters." 
(Told  by  a  begging  impostor  on  J\vTt/  Years 
Day,  1567.) 

Quaint     phraseology   aside,    the     beggars' 


MOODY'S  21 

ballads  of  the  seventeenth  century,  also,  still 
apply. 

Whether  the  gang  at  Moody's  know  it  or 
not,  they  belong  to  a  mystic  order  with  an 
enormous  background  of  history.  And  if 
tradition  has  not  actually  preserved  the  tricks 
by  which  the  order  thrives,  I  have  yet  to  dis- 
cover a  single  trick  that  was  not  practised 
before  this  century.  Indeed,  the  great  orig- 
inal geniuses  of  the  order  seem  to  have  lived 
centuries  ago.  For  generations  its  members 
have  contributed  nothing  to  the  common 
stock;  on  the  contrary,  they  have  been  living 
as  much  upon  the  wits  of  their  forbears  as 
upon  the  labor  of  the  community.  The  men 
at  Moody's  have  real  cause  to  blush  for  the 
shameful  degeneracy  of  their  wits. 


A    FREE    BREAKFAST:    AX    EXCUR- 
SION   WITH     BILLY 

THE  cheap  lodger  escapes  the  squalid 
monotony  of  a  cheap  boarding-house 
table,  and  once  in  a  great  while  he  may  fare 
the  worse  for  this  escape.  But  he  knows,  if 
any  one  knows,  where  to  get  the  most  food 
for  the  least  money. 

If  he  chooses  to  go  to  a  philanthropic 
restaurant,  he  can  have  rolls  and  coffee  for 
two  cents  and  a  full  dinner  for  five  cents. 
At  restaurants  without  the  philanthropic  taint, 
he  can  have  doughnuts  and  cheese  and  coffee  ; 
hot  mutton,  veal,  or  chicken  pie ;  potato 
salad  and  a  frankfurter;  lamb  stew,  fish  balls, 
or  pig's  feet,  with  bread  and  butter,  for  five 
cents.  Or,  for  ten  cents:  baked  beans,  fish 
balls,  corned-beef  hash,  sausages,  tripe,  or 
liver,  with  bread  and  butter,  coffee  and  pie. 

But  the  saloon  free  lunch  is  by  far  his 
strongest  hold.  In  the  saloon  he  is  given 
for  five  cents  almost  as  much  of  a  meal  as 
he  can  get  anywhere  else  for  the  same  money, 


A    FREE    BREAKFAST  23 

and  a  schooner  of  beer  besides.  Now,  on  three 
beers  and  three  such  lunches  a  day  a  man  may 
live  and  suffer  no  great  distress  of  stomach. 

Such  close  living  is  rarely  necessary.  It 
is  a  poor  operator  who  cannot  take  seventy- 
five  cents  a  day  or  its  equivalent  on  the 
street,  and,  of  this,  not  more  than  fifteen 
cents  ordinarily  goes  for  lodging.  This  means 
that  the  lodger  has  the  range  of  six-course, 
a  prix  fixe  dinners  at  fifteen,  twenty,  twenty- 
five,  and  thirty  cents,  and  of  h  prix  fixe  break- 
fasts and  suppers  at  fifteen  and  twenty  cents, 
as  well  as  of  a  large  number  of  comparatively 
wholesome  ^  la  carte  restaurants.  In  a  word, 
he  can  exist  on  fifteen  cents  a  day  for  food, 
live  fairly  for  thirty  cents,  and  like  a  lord, 
from  his  point  of  view,  for  sixty  cents. 

Even  thus  the  possibilities  are  not  ex- 
hausted. He  is  cunning  enough  to  leave  a 
restaurant  now  and  then  without  paying  his 
bill.  He  has  learned  to  slink  into  a  bar-room, 
eat  and  slink  out  again  without  attracting  the 
bar-keeper's  notice  ;  and  if  permitted  to  loaf 
about  a  bar,  he  stands  a  good  chance  of 
being  treated.  Then  there  are  the  missions, 
which  give  a  free  breakfast  or  a  free  tea  once 
a  week  to  their  patrons. 

It  was  at  a  North  End  mission,  by  invitation 
of  Billy  (the  religious  bum  of  Moody's),  that 
I  ate  my  first,  and  my  last,  mission  breakfast. 


24      MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

Tin's  breakfast  was  well  known  at  Moody's  ; 
it  was  not  in  favor  there.  "  A  feed  for  a  sick 
chicken,"  Doc  called  it,  and  Charcoal  swore 
that  two  hours'  wood-sawing  at  I  lawkins  street 
was  loafing  to  what  you  had  to  do  for  it.  It 
was  so  contemptuously  held  that  Billy  and  I 
took  pains  to  get  away,  without  letting  on 
where  we  were  going,  and  we  slouched  and 
shuffled  and  sidled  along  back  streets  through 
fear  of  meeting  some  of  the  gang. 

When  we  arrived,  there  was  still  half  an 
hour  to  the  time  appointed  for  the  breakfast; 
but  others  of  our  ilk  had  already  come,  not 
only  from  the  North  and  West  Ends,  but  even 
from  the  distant  South  End.  There  was  a 
line  of  outlandish  humanity  on  the  sunny  side 
of  the  mission  building,  and  a  pile  of  boards 
in  a  lumber  yard  close  by  held  up  another 
line. 

We  joined  the   men   against  the  wall,  and 
were  soon  busy,  like  them,  keeping  warm,— 
kicking  our  toes,  humping  our  shoulders,  and 
crowding  our  hands  deep  into  our  pockets. 

"  I  guess  they'll  let  us  in  before  long,"  said 
hopeful  Billy.  "  Hell  wouldn't  frighten  us  a 
speck.  We'd  just  be  hankerin'  for  it  if  they 
kep'  us  out  here  in  the  cold  too  long.  They'll 
be  careful  not  to  do  that.  It  'ud  be  bad  for 
their  sort  of  business.  Every  man  looks  out 
for  his  business,  you  know,  even  them  as 


A    FREE    BREAKFAST  25 

ain't  rightly  got  any,  —  parsons  an'  congress- 
men an'  hoboes." 

A  bloated  prostitute  came  up.  She  made 
a  vain  canvass  of  our  line,  then  tried  the 
board-pile.  There  she  prevailed  on  a  sod- 
den, blood-clotted  wretch  to  go  with  her. 
They  left  arm-in-arm  while  the  crowd 
cheered.  The  woman's  motive  must  have 
been  purely  animal,  for  her  victim  could  not 
have  had  a  penny  in  his  pocket. 

Billy  shook  his  head  moodily.  "  That 
bloke  hain't  got  no  sense.  Don't  the  Scripter 
say, '  There's  a  time  to  refrain  from  embracin',' 
an'  that's  eatin'  time,  ain't  it?  Don't  he  know 
it's  eatin'  time?  Why  don't  he  wait  till  after 
breakfast?  She'd  keep.  Nobody  ain't  a 
chasin'  after  her,  now  let  me  tell  you." 

At  9:  15  the  numbers  had  so  far  increased 
that  it  seemed  best  to  get  a  place  close  to  the 
entrance.  So  we  left  the  sunny  side  for  a 
shady  one.  Over  the  door  hung  a  large 
placard  : 

BREAKFAST   FOR   THE   DESTITUTE 

AT 

9:30  A.M. 
ALL    WELCOME. 

"  Ho  !  every  one  that  thirtieth,  come  ye  fo  the  ivatera, 
and  he  that  hath  no  money  :  come  ve.  buy  and  cat ;  yea, 
conic,  bnv  ivine  a?id  milk  -vithoitt  money  and  -without 
price." 


26       MOUDVS    LODGING    HOUSE 

A  tall  cynic  just  behind  me  read  it  through 
aloud.  "  Looks  a  heap  like  a  drive  on  the 
Sunday  closing  law,"  he  sneered  ;  "  but  don't 
yer  pin  no  faith  on  that.  They's  milk  to 
drink  mebbe,  canned  milk,  in  the  coffee,  any- 
ways ;  but  that  about  the  wine's  a  big  game 
of  bluff.  Think  they'd  give  you  booze?  Xo, 
damn  'em,  they'd  see  you  choked  first." 

Most  of  the  men  were  keenly  alive  to  the 
ludicrousness  of  their  position,  and  during 
the  fifteen  minutes  of  cold  waiting  that  re- 
mained, they  bandied  jokes  upon  the  break- 
fast, its  donors,  and  themselves. 

I  have  waited  for  admission  to  a  building 
in  many  sorts  of  crowds,  —  never  in  a  better- 
humored  one. 

By  9:30  the  patient  waiters  must  have 
numbered  three  hundred.  The  opening  of 
the  doors,  then,  was  the  signal  of  a  rough- 
and-tumble  scramble  for  precedence,  in  the 
course  of  which  hats  were  crushed  in,  coats 
torn,  and  pals  parted.  By  keeping  close  in 
sinuous  Billy's  wake  I  entered  the  building 
triumphantly  among  the  very  first. 

Perfect  order  was  enforced  inside  the  doors, 
and  we  marched  slowly,  not  to  say  sheep- 
ishly, into  a  low-studded  lecture-room,  while 
a  choir  sang  "  Rescue  the  Perishing,"  and 
other  hymns  calculated  to  cast  aspersions 
on  our  characters.  The  outside  doors  were 


A    FREE    BREAKFAST  27 

closed  when  about  t\vo  hundred  had  entered, 
although  many  hungry  ones  were  still  left  on 
the  outside.  We  were  assigned  to  settees  so 
placed,  back  to  back,  that  the  whole  com- 
pany was  divided  into  groups  of  eight,  fours 
facing  fours,  an  arrangement  at  once  sociable 
and  convenient. 

At  the  close  of  the  hymn-singing,  prayer 
was  offered,  much  to  the  disgust  of  the  hun- 
grier and  more  impatient  men.  Then  the 
feeding  began,  the  feeders  being  for  the  mo.^t 
part  well-bred  young  ladies.  Billy  nudged 
me.  "  Keep  yer  eye  peeled  now  fer  the 
peach  with  the  yeller  hair  and  the  big  breast- 
works. That's  her  comin'  this  way  now. 
We're  in  great  luck.  She's  goin'  to  feed  us." 

The  breakfast  consisted  of  coffee  and 
sandwiches.  Both  were  passed  twice.  The 
coffee  was  insipid,  the  sandwiches  were  de- 
licious. Billy,  by  a  clever,  well-timed  bit  of 
seeming  gaudier vV,  tipped  over  the  sandwich 
plate.  In  the  confusion  that  followed  he 
managed  to  slip  a  couple  of  sandwiches  into 
his  pocket.  "  That  makes  the  sandwiches 
all  right,"  he  whispered,  "  but  it's  too  bad 
about  the  coffee.  There's  no  pocketin'  that. 
Why  warn't  hoboes  made  with  camels' 
throats,  that's  what  I'd  like  to  know?  " 

The  feeding  over,  the  hymn-singing  was 
resumed,  and,  to  its  accompaniment,  we  were 


28       MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

marched  by  a  back  stairway  and  through  a 
back  entrance  into  the  main  hall  above. 
While  we  were  getting  seated,  the  familiar 
strains  of  "Rescue  the  Perishing"  came  to 
us  faintly  from  an  invisible  choir,  and  by 
this,  and  certain  rumbling  sounds  beneath 
us,  we  knew  that  the  breakfast-room  was 
being  filled  again.  Billy  was  uneasy  thereat. 
He  was  quite  ready  for  another  breakfast, 
but  with  all  his  ingenuity  could  think  of  no 
device  for  getting  it. 

A  reformed  drunkard  exhorted  us  for  half 
an  hour,  before  the  end  of  which  the  second 
group  of  breakfasters  had  come  up.  Whether 
this  exhorter  was  prouder  of  his  former 
beastliness  or  of  his  present  saintlincss,  it  was 
impossible  to  determine,  though  it  was  easy 
enough  to  see  which  phase  of  his  life  most 
interested  his  hearers. 

At  10:  30  the  hall  doors  were  thrown  open 
to  the  public  for  a  regular  church  service, 
but  burly  floor-walkers  guarded  each  aisle 
to  see  that  none  (if  the  corralled  destitute 
escaped.  The  Christian  public  sat  apart 
from  the  destitute,  a  precaution  for  which 
they  must  not  be  too  much  blamed.  Kven 
thus  the  lodging-house  odor  could  not  be 
escaped.  That  had  by  this  time  penetrated 
every  nook  and  cranny  of  the  building;  but 
the  danger  from  crawling  tilings  was  mini- 
mixed,  an  item  not  to  be  despised. 


A    FRKK    BREAKFAST  29 

The  regular  church  service  lasted  an  hour 
and  a  half.  Some,  the  wisest,  of  whom  Billy 
was,  of  course,  one,  took  naps.  "  I'm  savin' 
myself  for  the  pow-wow,"  he  whispered,  as 
he  settled  himself  for  his  first  one.  Others 
extracted  a  vast  amount  of  whispered  mirth 
out  of  the  situation.  The  rest,  the  least  ex- 
perienced, cursed,  under  their  breaths,  the 
diabolical  device  by  which  they  had  been 
trapped  into  a  full  morning  church  service. 
The  solemn  passing  of  the  contribution-box 
to  row  after  row  of  confessed  "  dead  beats  " 
was  as  ludicrous  a  spectacle  as  is  ever  likely 
to  be  granted  to  this  world,  funny  as  things 
are  here. 

After  the  benediction,  the  Christian  public 
withdrew  for  a  breath  of  fresh  air.  Not  so 
the  breakfasters.  An  after-meeting  for  their 
special  benefit  was  announced.  Several  of 
the  more  aggressive  started  defiant!}"  for  the 
door.  They  were  quickly  ordered  back  to 
their  seats  by  the  floor-walkers. 

I  was  so  incensed  that  I  was  on  the  point 
of  exhorting  the  men  to  a  charge  against 
their  keepers,  when  a  glance  at  Billy's  face 
recalled  me  to  my  senses.  "  Submission  is 
the  line  of  least  effort,  therefore  the  only  line 
a  bum  should  follow,"  was  the  meaning  of 
its  beautiful  unconcern.  As  an  apostle  of 
the  Tolstoian  gospel  of  non-resistance,  I  can 


30       MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

recommend  Hilly  without  reserve.  He  saved 
me  from  making  a  very  bad  bull,  for,  in  my 
unsophisticated  impatience,  I  had  all  but  for- 
gotten my  metier. 

The  leader  of  the  after-meeting  had  the 
stock  qualifications  for  that  office  ;  namely,  i\ 
rusty  Prince  Albert  coat,  a  white  tie.  and  a 
marvellous,  manual  dexterity  in  manipulating 
a  copiously  marked  Hible.  He  was  a  saintly- 
mouthed,  patronizing  youngster,  fresh  from  a 
theological  school,  not  too  long  away  from 
his  mother,  less  wise  in  the  wisdom  life  gives 
than  every  one  of  his  hearers,  and  glorying 
in  his  ignorance. 

He  made  a  comically  desperate  attempt  to 
get  on  to  common  ground  with  the  men,  by 
telling  them  that  he  was  out  of  a  job,  just  as 
they  were.  He  was  waiting  for  the  Lord  to 
call  him  to  a  church.  Until  the  Lord  did 
call  him,  he  was  going  to  spend  all  his  time 
praying  and  reading  his  Hible.  It  would 
help  him  to  know  the  Lord's  voice  when  he 
heard  it.  That  was  what  they  ought  to  do, 
too.  Then  they  wouldn't  be  chasing  after 
the  calls  of  the  devil  by  any  mistake. 

This  after-meeting  was  up  to  the  average 
of  after-meetings,  I  suppose.  The  leader 
certainly  believed  it  to  be  rather  above 
the  average,  for  he  kept  repeating,  "  The 
Spirit's  coming !  I  feel  the  Spirit  coming) 


A    FREE    BREAKFAST  31 

The  Spirit's  here  with  us  !  Don't  you  feel 
It,  brothers  ?  Oh,  the  great  work  the 
Spirit's  doing  this  day !  Bless  God  for  it, 
brothers,  bless  God  !  "  But,  somehow,  from 
the  seats  it  seemed  a  shameless  travesty 
of  religion.  There,  napping,  joking,  and 
cursing  increased  quite  as  rapidly  as  the 
speaker's  excitement,  and  that  is  saying  a 
great  deal. 

Seven  men  went  forward  to  the  anxious 
seat,  where  a  corps  of  male  and  female  as- 
sistants surrounded  them.  Finally,  Billy 
went  forward  too.  Billy  didn't  feel  quite 
right  about  leaving  me  behind.  He  really 
wanted  to  do  the  courteous  thing  by  me ; 
but  long  habit  was  too  strong  for  him. 
"  Guess  I'd  better  trot  up  there  too.  I 
may  as  well  get  all  the  fun's  a-goin'  while 
I'm  about  it.  Mebbc  that  woman  in  the 
blue  dress  '11  put  her  arm  round  my  neck  to 
coax  me  like  she's  doin'  to  that  hobo  with 
the  black  eye." 

So  this  was  the  pow-wow  for  which  Billy 
had  been  saving  himself.  Pow-wow  !  Billy 
certainly  has  as  great  a  talent  for  nomen- 
clature as  for  piety. 

A  portion  of  the  eight  declared  themselves 
converted,  and  there  were  "  Hallelujahs " 
and  "  Praise  Gods  "  from  both  laborers  and 
converts.  Far  be  it  from  me  to  denv  that  the 


32       MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

conversions  were  genuine ;  but  I  have  seen 
enough  of  these  fellows  to  assert  that  they 
have  expert  knowledge  of  all  the  promising 
signs  of  conversion  and  are  quite  capable  of 
counterfeiting  them  when  they  see  anything 
to  be  gained  thereby.  Besides,  there  is  a 
fine,  old-fashioned  gallantry  about  them 
that  makes  them  reluctant  to  refuse  a 
lady  anything  she  asks,  even  to  a  change 
of  heart.  "  Ce  que  feiiutie  -cent,  Dicu  le 
vent." 

It  was  almost  one  o'clock  when  we  were 
unjailed.  Even  then  —  as  if  we  had  not 
been  sufficiently  imposed  on  already  —  we 
were  urged  to  remain  to  a  Bible  Class, 
vague  suggestions  of  overcoats  being 
coupled  with  the  urgings.  Needless  to  say, 
I  withdrew  with  the  majority.  I  had 
paid  for  my  breakfast,  many  times  over, 
by  listening  to  three  and  a  half  hours 
of  religious  appeal,  and  I  could  stand  no 
more.  Billy  stayed.  I  shall  never  cease 
to  wonder  at  his  trained  endurance  in  these 
things. 

When  Bill}'  returned  at  last  to  Moody's 
he  not  only  had  a  tale  of  a  good  dinner  at 
the  end  of  his  tongue,  but  a  good  overcoat 
on  his  back.  The  overcoat  pawned  well  the 
next  day,  and  we  all  had  a  generous  smack 
of  the  tipple  it  bought.  Thus  was  the  mis- 


A    FREE    BREAKFAST  33 

sion  breakfast  overruled  for  good  to  the  men 
at  Moodv's.     Thus  did  it  become 


'•  The  sweet  presence  of  a  good  diffused, 
And  in  diffusion  ever  more  intense." 


The  mission  folk  had  builded    better,  far 
better,  than  the}-  knew. 

3 


RILEY'S:    A   TEN-CENT    LODGING 

ALL  Boston  lodging-houses  are  not  as 
well  managed  as  Moody's. 
About  dusk,  one  winter's  afternoon,  I  en- 
tered a  house  where  ten-cent  beds  were 
advertised  and  climbed  one  flight  of  stairs. 
At  the  top  I  found  a  good-natured,  round- 
faced  old  man,  who  took  my  clime  and  di- 
rected me  up  another  flight.  He  did  not 
register  me,  as  required  by  law,  nor  give 
me  a  bed  number,  as  is  done  in  most  houses. 
The  second  flight  of  stairs  landed  me  in  a 
large,  low-studded  room  containing  as  many 
as  fifty  beds.  At  a  sink  in  a  corner  one 
man  was  washing  his  feet  and  another  his 
shirt.  There  was  a  stove  in  the  centre  from 
which  a  funnel  ran  to  the  corner  of  the  room 
opposite  that  in  which  the  sink  stood.  Di- 
rectly over  the  stove  was  an  opening  in  the 
ceiling  letting  heat  into  a  loft  just  under  a 
cupola,  where  there  were  a  few  more  beds 
(at  seven  cents).  This  stove  was  a  remark- 
able one  —  as  lar^c  as  a  small  furnace  and 


RI  LEY'S  35 

shaped  like  an  inverted  ale  mug.  From  its 
lower  front,  which  was  open,  a  fantastic,  red 
glow  streamed.  The  room  had  no  other 
light  except  a  dingy  kerosene  lamp  at  the 
head  of  the  stairs.  Half  a  dozen  greasy- 
looking  pails  and  kettles  of  various  shapes 
and  sizes  were  steaming  on  the  stove. 
Around  it  a  number  of  ropes  were  stretched, 
and  on  these  shirts  and  stockings  were  hung 
to  dry. 

Beds  were  boards  nailed  together  into 
boxes,  in  their  turn  nailed  to  the  floor. 
Mattresses  were  laid  on  the  boxes.  Sheets, 
blankets,  and  pillows  were  very  dirty.  In 
the  absence  of  bed  numbers  it  was  necessary 
to  sit  on  the  beds  in  order  to  hold  them 
against  new  arrivals.  Men  were  thus  seated 
all  over  the  room,  half-dressed  and  un- 
dressed, eating  lunches  wrapped  in  news- 
papers, drinking  tin  dippers  of  tea  and  coffee 
bre\ved  on  the  stove,  passing  black  bottles 
around,  smoking  clay  pipes,  mending  clothes, 
swearing  and  gossiping. 

One  very  pale,  emaciated  man  made  fre- 
quent journeys  from  his  bed  to  the  sink  to 
vomit.  Every  few  minutes  some  one  would 
go  to  the  stove,  stick  a  spill  into  its  red  eye 
and  light  a  pipe,  thereby  illuminating  for  an 
instant  all  the  obscure  nooks  of  the  room. 
One  of  these  pipe-lighters  was  a  gray-haired 


36      MOODV'S    LODGING    HOUSK 

man  past  eighty,  who  hobbled  to  the  stove 
stark  naked.  He  was  not  only  shrivelled,  but 
badly  hunch-backed  and  otherwise  misshapen. 
As  he  ducked  first  into  the  red  light  of  the 
red  eye  and  then  stood  as  nearly  erect  as  was 
in  his  power,  ghastly  pale  from  the  yellow 
light  of  his  spill,  I  wished  myself  a  thousand 
times  an  artist.  A  more  Dantcsque  theme 
was  never  vouchsafed  a  painter. 

A  fat  man,  "jolly  drunk,"  was  brought  to 
the  top  of  the  stairs  by  the  doorkeeper  and 
left  with  the  order,  "  Get  on  to  a  bed  lively 
now,  and  don't  get  off  it  for  no  man."  Though 
a  bit  dazed,  he  staggered  to  an  empty  bed 
and  broke  into  maudlin  singing,  fitting  the 
words  of  several  popular  favorites  to  a  single 
tune.  After  a  little  he  urged  any  one  who 
could  to  sing  a  good  Irish  song,  and  as  no 
one  did  so  he  sang  one  himself —  of  his  "  love 
for  a  maid."  Next  he  opened  a  bag  of  cakes. 
"  Is  they  anybody  here  wants  a  cake?  Them 
as  wants  'em,  can  have  'em,  that's  my  motto." 
Three  or  four  men  came  towards  the  bag, 
cautiously  at  first,  as  if  fearing  some  bluff 
game  ;  then,  having  received  generously  of 
the  cakes,  turned  back  to  their  beds  and  de- 
voured them.  "  Yes,  them  as  wants  can  have, 
that's  my  motto,"  repeated  the  donor.  <l  I've 
got  some  rolls,  too  ;  but  them's  for  breakfast. 
Just  call  around  again  in  the  morning." 


R I  LEY'S  37 

These  generous  expressions  were  cut  short 
by  a  series  of  terrific  yells  from  a  bed  in  the 
middle  of  the  room.  "  My  God  !  My  God  ! 
MY  GOD !  "  then  an  inarticulate  screech. 
"Guess  he's  in  fer  the  jim-jams."  — "That 
feller  yer  want  ter  help  ycr  don't  live  round 
these  parts ;  if  yer  want  anything  much 
yer'll  hev  ter  crawl  up  and  git  it  yerself," 
came  from  the  other  beds.  The  cries  con- 
tinued at  intervals  of  a  few  seconds,  some- 
times "  My  God  !  "  sometimes  "  God  !  " 
without  the  "  My."  At  first,  everybody 
laughed,  then,  as  it  got  monotonous,  every- 
body swore.  Finally,  a  neighbor  rolled  the 
sufferer  over,  and  he  was  quiet  for  a  minute. 
Then  he  writhed,  sat  half-up  in  bed,  and  fell 
backward  exhausted,  his  head  striking  the 
wooden  back  of  his  cot  with  a  loud  noise. 
When  he  began  the  cries  again,  the  generous 
inebriate  staggered  and  swaggered  over  to 
him  from  the  opposite  side  of  the  room, 
boxed  his  ears  and  told  him  to  "  shut  up." 
He  obeyed,  but  was  quiet  only  a  little  while, 
and  the  boxing  and  shutting-up  process 
had  to  be  repeated  many  times  during  the 
evening.  It  was  almost  a  case  of  delirium 
tremens. 

My  nearest  neighbors  told  fish  stories  — 
of  catching  a  halibut  weighing  300  pounds, 
and  a  turtle  weighing  "  1,300  pounds,  14 


38       MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

pounds  and  13  ounces  exact."  A  man  some 
distance  away  raised  his  voice  to  say:  "  Four 
years  ago  no  man  ever  seen  me  in  a  lodgin'- 
house.  I  was  workin'  with  a  good  man  not 
far  from  here  ;  "  and  one  of  his  neighbors 
raised  his  voice  to  query:  "Four  years,  did 
yer  say?  An'  how  long  was  yer  sentence? 
Three  years  an'  a  half  ?  "  Then  general 
mirth  at  the  hit. 

When  I  was  ready  to  sleep  I  laid  my  coat 
and  hat  on  my  pillow  to  avoid  immediate 
contact  with  the  dirt.  In  a  few  minutes 
bed-bugs  were  running  over  them.  The 
stove  was  at  full  blast,  not  a  window  was 
open,  the  heat  was  stifling,  and  the  odor 
worse.  I  could  see  the  bugs  performing 
military  evolutions  on  the  wall  and  floor,  and 
feel  them  doing  the  same  on  my  neck.  Fi- 
nally, I  sat  up,  as  a  partial  escape,  and  in  that 
position  I  got  several  good  naps  during  the 
night;  but  in  my  lucid  moments  I  envied 
the  men  who  were  so  drunk  they  could  not 
sense  the  bites,  the  heat,  or  the  stench. 

If  I  were  a  regular  lodger  in  a  ten-cent 
house,  I  should  get  drunk  as  often  as  I  could 
find  the  liquid  to  do  it  with. 


THE    BED     I     EARNED 

I  ENTERED  the  office  of  the  "  Wayfarers' 
Lodge  "  after  a  hard,  slippery  tramp  of 
more  than  a  mile  through  a  storm  of  alter- 
nate sleet  and  rain.  As  homeless  men  do 
not  carry  umbrellas,  I  was  drenched  to  the 
skin.  Yet  I  was  quickly  shoved  into  line  to 
wait  my  turn  with  the  night-clerk  who  was 
registering  applicants.  "What's  your  name? 
How  old  are  you  ?  Where  were  you  born? 
Next!"  was  the  form  with  each  applicant. 
When  my  turn  for  answering  came,  I  invol- 
untarily leaned  over  the  rail  just  a  trifle  in 
order  to  make  myself  heard.  "  Here,  you 
bum,  you,  what  do  you  think  you're  doing 
there?  Get  off  that  rail  and  stand  up 
straight.  Lively  !  "  was  bawled  at  me  from 
behind  the  desk.  I  was  a  total  stranger  to 
the  clerk,  for  all  that  he  knew  an  honest  man 
in  real  distress.  It  was  a  bit  of  gratuitous 
blackguardism  that  almost  threw  me  off  my 
guard.  I  was  on  the  point  of  freeing  my 
mind  to  his  picayune  highness,  when  I  re- 


40       MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

fleeted  that  I  really  wished  to  sleep  in  the 
Lodge  that  night.  So  I  allowed  myself  to  be 
cowed  into  submission,  as  the  other  poor 
devils  who  come  here  do,  and  was  rewarded  for 
my  self-restraint  with  a  red  card  bearing  a 
number  —  my  mark  of  identity  for  the  rest  of 
my  sojourn. 

In  the  basement  hallway,  where  I  was 
sent  from  the  office,  a  tall,  saturnine  func- 
tionary was  crying  with  the  voice  of  a 
street-hawker:  "Take  your  hat  and  shoes  to 
bed.  Leave  nothing  in  your  shoes.  Leave 
your  underclothes  loose.  Tie  your  other 
clothes  together  in  a  bundle.  Wear  your 
check  around  your  neck."  As  soon  as  I  had 
stripped  and  bundled  my  outer  clothes,  I 
passed  through  a  doorway,  where  I  received 
a  metal  check  in  return  for  my  red  card  and 
was  relieved  of  all  my  possessions  except  my 
shoes  and  hat.  Then  came  the  compulsory 
bath,  so  very  disagreeable  an  affair  that  the 
repugnance  of  the  begging  fraternity  to  it 
may  charitably  be  attributed  to  something 
else  than  laziness  and  incorrigible  love  of 
dirt.  The  floor  of  the  bath-room  was  sloppy 
and  cold  to  bare  feet.  If  the  tubs  themselves 
were  really  clean,  they  did  not  look  so  ;  the 
white  linings  were  badly  discolored  and 
chipped  off  in  many  spots. 

I  was  directed  to  a  tub  containing  three  or 


THE    BED    I    EARNED  41 

four  inches  of  warm  water.  This  water  had 
a  suspicious  look,  still  I  cannot  swear  that 
another  man  had  used  it  before  me.  Neither 
can  I  swear  that  another  did  not  use  it  after 
me.  I  certainly  saw  no  water  changed  while 
I  remained  in  the  bath-room.  One  of  the 
employes,  to  be  sure,  was  posed  with  a 
scrubbing-brush  in  a  threatening  attitude, 
but  I  did  not  see  him  use  the  brush.  The 
towel,  which  hung  over  the  lower  end  of  my 
tub,  was  perfectly  clean.  The  rack  on  which 
I  was  made  to  stand  while  wiping  \vas  cold, 
wet,  and  dirty. 

The  bath-room  was  unquestionably  pictur- 
esque with  its  clouds  of  steam  and  grotesque 
anatomies,  but  picturesqueness  is  not  the 
only  thing  essential  in  a  bath-room;  a  spray 
of  clean  water  is  much  better  for  bathing 
purposes.  As  I  left,  a  coarse,  clean  night- 
shirt was  handed  me  from  a  bushel  basket  of 
the  same  and  I  was  directed  to  my  room  up 
two  flights  of  stairs.  "  Take  the  elevator  to 
the  right,"  said  the  good-natured  shirt-dis- 
penser with  a  facetious  wink. 

My  bed  was  one  of  a  number  of  cots  in  a 
clean,  steam-heated,  ventilated  room,  without 
a  trace  of  the  familiar  lodging-house  odor, 
and  so,  in  spite  of  the  humiliating  experiences 
with  the  night-clerk  and  the  bath-tub,  I  was 
well  content  to  crawl  between  the  blankets 


42       MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

with  my  metal  check  about  my  neck.  The 
novelty  of  being  checked  for  dreamland,  as  a 
trunk  is  checked  for  a  journey,  was,  it  is  true, 
a  little  disturbing,  but  talking  aloud  was 
strictly  forbidden,  and  the  stillness  was  highly 
conducive  to  sleep. 

We  were  rapped  up  before  light,  and  within 
two  minutes  the  dormitory  was  emptied. 
Once  again  in  the  basement  hallway,  we 
waited  for  our  numbers  to  be  called  in  a 
perilous,  cold  draught,  —  a  quite  unnecessary 
hardship,  as  we  might  as  easily  have  been  sent 
from  the  sleeping-room  in  small  squads. 
The  dressing  was  done  amid  much  confusion, 
for  the  hallway  was  overcrowded  and  we 
were  in  no  very  good  humor  over  our  treat- 
ment. My  underclothes  were  still  clammy 
from  the  steam-cleansing  to  which  the}-  had 
been  subjected  during  the  night,  and  my 
outer  clothes  were  nearly  as  wet  as  when 
they  were  tied  up.  It  was  as  dangerous  as 
it  was  unpleasant  to  get  into  them.  When  I 
was  dressed,  an  axe  was  given  to  me  and  I 
was  set  at  work  in  the  yard  upon  wood  that 
was  rough  and  icy  to  my  unwonted  hands. 

The  breakfast  to  which  I  was  allowed  to 
go  after  two  hours  of  wood-splitting  and 
piling,  was  served  at  a  well-scrubbed  counter 
in  a  cheerless  room.  It  consisted  of  hard 
ship-biscuit,  an  enormous  bowl  of  soup,  and 


THE    BED    I    EARNED  43 

several  "hunks"  of  bread.  The  soup  was 
ridiculously  thin,  and  so  peppery  that  it  nearly 
blistered  my' tongue.  It  did  not  satisfy 
hunger  and  did  create  a  raging  thirst  for 
drink,  —  a  sorry  turn  to  serve  easily  tempted 
men.  No  one  of  my  companions  ate  more 
than  a  third  of  what  was  in  his  bowl.  The 
instant  I  stopped  eating,  I  was  gruffly  ordered 
off  the  premises,  and,  all  things  considered,  I 
was  not  loath  to  go. 


JOE    GUNN'S  :     A    TWENTY-CENT 
LODGING 

THE  entire  front  of  a  certain  four-story, 
brick  building  at  the  South  End  is  labelled 
with  painted  letters  after  this  curious  fashion  : 

(.UXX'S     LODGING-HOUSE. 

FRIENDLY  LODGING-HOUSE 

for 
SOBER   MEN. 

Prices  : 

75,  20,  25.  35,  jo  c/s. 

N"0    DRUNKEN    MEN    ADMITTED. 

The  high  moral  tone  of  this  label  always 
attracted  me.  And  so  it  was  only  natural 
that  I  should  choose  to  visit  Gunn's,  among 
the  first,  when  I  set  out  to  explore  the  cheap 
lodging-houses  of  Boston. 

There  were  two   flights   of  stairs  to   climb. 


JOK    GUNN'S  45 

At  the  top  of  the  second  was  a  door  with  a 
good-sized  hole  in  the  centre  like  the  portal 
to  the  hall  of  a  secret  order.  Through  this 
hole  a  man  peered  hard  at  me,  and  through 
this  hole  I  paid  twenty  cents  and  told  my 
name,  in  lieu  of  giving  a  password.  I  was 
then  allowed  to  go  into  the  office. 

A  number  of  seedy-looking  persons,  sev- 
eral of  whom  were  intoxicated,  were  seated 
smoking  about  the  office  stove.  They  paid 
little  attention  to  me  as  I  joined  them.  A 
conspicuous  sign  over  the  clerk's  desk  an- 
nounced that  the  office  must  be  vacated  every 
night  at  eleven  o'clock,  but  as  it  was  already 
1 1 : 45, 1  concluded  that  this  law  was  as  much 
of  a  dead  letter  as  the  sign  outside  —  "  No 
Drunken  Men  Admitted."  The  walls  had 
little  adornment  except  a  few  freshly  printed 
placards  of  the  rules  of  the  house  : 

I.  Xo  Cash,  Xo  Bed. 

II.  Xo  Disorderly  Conduct. 

III.  Loud  Talking  Must  Cease  at  Ten. 

IV.  Xo  Smoking  in  Bed. 

V.     Xo  Drunken  Men  Received. 

Adornment  seems  to  be  the  main  purpose 
of  printed,  lodging-house  rules  ;  or,  it  may  be, 
they  arc  held  to  give  the  caclict  of  respecta- 
bility from  their  somewhat  distant  resem- 
blance to  the  rules  posted  in  the  rooms  of 


46      MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

hotels.  Certainly,  there  was  no  pretence  here 
of  enforcing  any  of  them  except  the  first,  and 
that  was  allowed  to  have  many  exceptions 
among  habitiics.  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten, 
in  fact,  rules  are  only  intended  to  impress 
the  imaginations  of  officers  of  inspection  or 
philanthropically  disposed  visitors. 

After  hugging  the  stove  just  long  enough 
to  get  warm — not  long  enough  to  find  the 
drift  of  the  talk  around  me  —  I  started  for 
bed.  Back  of  the  20  CENT  door  was  a  long, 
narrow,  one-windowed  room.  It  was  dimly 
lighted.  Two  of  its  walls  were  of  painted 
brick,  the  other  two  of  wood-sheathing. 
Its  ceiling  was  covered  with  paper,  badly 
discolored  by  leaks  from  above,  and  its 
floor  was  carpeted  with  a  thick  coating  of 
dirt.  It  contained  ten  cot  beds,  five  on  each 
long  side,  with  an  aisle  between  the  fives.  Of 
two  or  three  beds  still  vacant,  I  chose  the 
one  nearest  the  window.  It  was  woven  wire 
on  a  wooden  frame  a  few  inches  high,  had  a 
grimy  mattress,  two  dirty  sheets,  a  blood- 
stained pillow,  and  a  single  comforter  with  a 
great  rent  in  the  centre. 

The  night  being  very  cold,  I  did  not  think 
it  wise  to  undress,  so  I  crawled  in  just  as  I 
was  and  tried  to  draw  the  comforter  over 
me.  The  rent,  however,  made  it  useless  for  a 
covering,  and,  as  it  was  clammy  and  far  from 


JOE    GUNN'S  47 

sweet,  I  threw  it  one  side  in  disgust.  That 
my  consciousness  of  the  cold  was  not  entirely 
due  to  my  tender  inexperience,  I  knew  by 
muttered  curses  from  my  room-mates,  and 
this  was  reassuring.  Besides,  the  cold  had 
its  cheerful  side.  I  was  not  troubled  by 
bugs.  I  cannot  believe  that  these  filthy 
beds  were  uninfested.  The  bugs  must  have 
been  too  cold  to  crawl. 

About  12:30  a  man  staggered  in  and 
plumped  down  on  the  edge  of  my  bed  as  if 
he  owned  it.  He  proved  to  be  a  pal  of  the 
lodger  across  the  aisle  from  me,  and  was 
probably  accustomed  to  sleep  in  the  par- 
ticular bed  I  had  preempted.  He  was  sur- 
prised enough  to  find  it  occupied,  but  not 
angry  in  the  least. 

He  got  his  head  down  close  to  me  and 
examinedmc  (while  I  feigned  slumber)  by  the 
light  from  the  window  at  first,  afterwards  with 
the  help  of  two  or  three  matches.  "Why, 
the  poor  little  bugger  looks  sick  !  "  he  said  at 
last.  "  Why  didn't  he  take  his  clothes  off? 
He'll  freeze  to  death"  —  getting  rather  mixed 
—  "if  he  don't  take  his  clothes  off.  He's 
drunk,  I  guess."  He  put  his  arms  around 
me  tenderly  and  tried  to  cajole  me  into 
taking  off  my  clothes,  and  crawling  under 
the  torn  blanket,  but  I  surlily  turned  my 
back  on  him  and  sleepily  refused. 


48       MOODV'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

"  Why,  you'll  freeze  to  death  before  morn- 
ing !  "  he  went  on.  "  You  sec  you  ain't  got 
so  much  rum  on  your  insides  as  I  have. 
Mebbc  you've  had  a  drop  or  so,  too,  but  you 
ain't  got  enough  to  keep  you  good  and 
warm."  He  would  have  lifted  me  off  the 
bed  to  undress  me  had  not  his  unsteadiness 
prevented.  He  finally  succeeded,  however, 
in  raising  my  legs  and  rolling  the  old  com- 
forter tightly  round  them — a  real  kindness 
(for  it  helped  much  to  keep  me  warm),  and 
as  such  only  one  of  many  I  have  received 
from  hoboes,  drunk  and  sober. 

Finding  another  bed  for  himself,  he  slowly 
undressed,  chatting  the  while  with  his  pal. 
"  This  here's  a  good  place  to  sleep,  if  'tis 
cold,  an'  I'm  goin'  to  sleep  till  noon.  I'm 
never  goin'  to  sleep  again  at  the  Fairmount 
House.  That's  much  too  bad  even  for  the 
likes  of  me.  A  man  paid  me  a  bed  there  one 
night  last  week.  Now,  you  know,  as  well  a>> 
anybody  does,  I  always  makes  it  a  point  to 
take  what's  given  me,  but  for  all  that  I  had  a 
hard  job  to  stick  the  night  out.  This  damned 
yeller  thing"  (taking  up  his  pillow),  " 's 
dirty  enough,  but  it's  better' n  the  Fairmount 
House."  Then,  assuming  the  lofty  air  of 
one  who  has  seen  better  days,  "  I  didn't 
always  have  to  sleep  in  a  hole  like  this,  an'  I 
wouldn't  have  to  now  if  I  was  willin'  to 


JOE    GUNN'S  49 

buckle  down  to  steady  work.  But  I'd  lose 
my  freedom,  if  I  took  to  workin'.  Now 
I've  got  my  freedom,  an'  I  ain't  no  reason 
to  kick,  so  long's  I  can  get  so  good  a 
place  as  this  to  sleep  in  for  twenty  cents. 
Besides,  ain't  I  hustled  in  four  ham  sand- 
wiches an'  three  good  drinks  since  supper- 
time?  " 

When  I  rcentered  the  office  in  the  morn- 
ing there  was  a  picturesque  group  about  the 
stove.  One  of  the  group,  Jonas  Brigham  by 
name,  was  a  bent,  decrepit  Yankee  of  eighty, 
who  claimed  to  have  been  a  politician  in  his 
young  manhood.  He  was  brimful  of  intimate 
gossip  about  Webster  and  Clay  and  other 
men  in  public  life,  as  far  back  as  the  Mexi- 
can War.  His  claim  was  audacious  enough, 
in  view  of  his  present  condition,  but  it  may 
have  had  a  foundation  in  truth  for  all  that. 
He  may  easily  have  been  a  page  in  Congress  ; 
he  may  even  have  been  a  lobbyist.  Lobby- 
ing and  bumming  are  of  closest  kin  in  their 
salient  qualities.  Scarcely  any  readjustment 
of  mental  outlook  or  moral  standards  would 
be  necessary  in  passing  from  the  former  to 
the  latter. 

Another  was  a  sturdy  young  Swede,  who 
was  drying  by  the  stove  a  pair  of  stockings 
he  had  just  washed.  He  was  a  clean-cut, 
handsome  fellow,  neatly  dressed,  well-man- 

4 


50      MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

nered  and  fair-spoken  ;  as  yet,  little,  if  at  all, 
contaminated  by  his  surroundings. 

I  remember  also  a  one-legged  negro,  who 
was  interesting  mainly  for  his  sunny-faced 
silence.  He  spoke  not,  except  in  answer  to 
a  direct  question,  but  listened  to  the  talk  in- 
tently, watching  the  faces  of  the  talkers  with 
the  eager,  undisguised  delight  of  a  child  at  a 
Punch  and  Judy  show.  Even  when  the  con- 
versation lapsed,  he  kept  chuckling  on,  over- 
powered by  the  fun  of  his  own  thinkings. 

Who  would  hesitate  to  be  a  vagrant  if 
being  one  would  make  life  so  perpetually 
amusing? 

"  Hluenose,"  a  wild-eyed  creature,  whose 
youth  was  passed  in  the  Maritime  Provinces, 
took  to  praising  drink  as  a  sweetener  of  the 
temper.  "  Before  I  used  to  drink,"  he  said, 
"  I  used  to  be  ugly  all  the  time.  Xow,  when 
I'm  half  full,  as  I  am  most  of  the  time,  things 
don't  offend  me  at  all  like  they  used  to.  Let 
me  tell  you  :  Before  ever  I  touched  the  drink 
I  was  working  for  a  man  down  in  Prince 
Edward  Island.  One  day,  when  I  was  skin- 
ning sheep,  he  angered  me  by  pressing  my 
head  down  (all  in  fun,  you  know)  and  call- 
ing me  a  '  dirty  little  red-head.'  He  was 
twice  as  big  as  me,  but  quick  as  a  flash  (with 
the  help  of  the  devil  himself,  I've  always 
been  a-saying)  I  let  him  have  the  knife, 


JOE    GUXN'S  51 

straight  in  the  belly.  '  I'm  killed  !  '  the  man 
yelled,  and  I  thought  sure  enough  he  was,  for 
his  guts  run  out  so  they  had  to  be  held  in 
place  by  a  boy,  while  he  was  being  taken  to 
his  house.  He  got  well,  but  I  had  to  serve 
my  time  all  the  same,  and  all  on  account  of 
not  drinking.  I  shouldn't  have  been  ugly 
like  that  if  I'd  had  some  rum  in  me." 

There  were  fond  anticipations  of  the  sum- 
mer, when  less  hustling  would  be  necessary, 
because  sleeping  could  be  done  out-of-doors. 
Everybody  testified  that  the  vigilance  of  the 
city  police  made  it  more  than  useless  to  try 
to  spend  the  night  on  the  benches  of  the 
Common  or  the  Public  Garden.  But  it  ap- 
peared just  as  clearly  that  there  were  plenty 
of  other  areas  not  so  well  guarded. 

Several  open-air  sleeping  experiences  were 
narrated.  Here  is  one  of  them  : 

"  Got  something  of  a  jag  on  over  in  South 
Boston  one  night  last  summer,  an'  crawled 
into  an  old  cart  on  the  flats  to  sleep.  About 
two  o'clock,  I  should  think  it  was,  a  copper 
shook  me  awake  an'  wanted  to  know  what  I 
was  there  for.  I  saw  I  was  like  to  get  pulled 
in  anyhow,  so  I  thought  I  might  as  well  have 
the  fun  of  spinning  a  little  yarn. 

"  I  went  on  an'  told  the  copper  as  how  I 
had  come  over  from  Cambridge  the  night 
before  on  purpose  to  see  a  man  about  busi- 


52       MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

ness.  How  he  was  a-bed  when  I  got  to  his 
house,  an'  how  I'd  got  to  see  him  in  the 
morning  before  he  went  to  his  work  at  six, 
an'  it  was  so  warm  I  thought  I  might  as  well 
bunk  down  there  as  anywhere.  Do  yer  know 
that  copper  swallered  the  yarn  straight?  He 
asked  me  my  name  —  of  course  I  give  him 
the  wrong  one  —  an'  then  told  me  he  didn't 
rnind  my  staying  the  night  out  under  the 
circumstances,  so  I  had  a  bully  good  sleep 
out  of  it." 

"  Over  on  the  flats,  was  it?  My  eye  !  but 
I  like  that  myself,  too  ;  there's  more  hoors 
sleeps  there  as  men,"  was  the  only  com- 
ment evoked  by  this  tale. 

An  old  fellow  who  had  been  washing  his 
handkerchiefs  at  the  sink,  and  was  spreading 
them  to  dry  over  the  back  of  an  empty 
chair,  on  being  twitted  with  being  a  "  wash- 
woman," retaliated  with  some  caustic  obser- 
vations upon  the  ignorance  and  stupidity  of 
his  dericlers.  "  You  fellers  think  you're  smart, 
don't  yer?  Well,  you  talked  more'n  an  hour 
last  night  about  the  town  I  was  born  an' 
brung  up  in  (I  didn't  let  on,  just  to  see  what 
you'd  say  about  it),  an'  I'll  be  blamed  if  you 
didn't  get  so  far  off  that  you  got  paralyzed 
talkin'  about  it." 

Just  as  I  started  away  to  breakfast,  a 
wordy  quarrel  was  begun  between  a  big 


JOE    GUXN'S  53 

fellow  of  two  hundred  pounds  or  more  called 
"  Fatty,"  and  his  pal,  a  little  slip  of  a  fellow 
of  not  more  than  a  hundred  weight,  over  the 
question,  "  Who  bought  the  last  pipe?" 

"  'Tain't  that  I  care  for  the  expense," 
swaggered  Fatty;  "it's  only  a  cent  anyhow 
for  a  T.  D.,  but  it's  the  principle  of  the  thing. 
I  don't  believe  in  being  run  all  over  by  a  flea 
of  a  thing  like  you." 

I  bethought  myself  of  the  recriminations 
of  college  chums  over  matches  and  tobacco, 
and  realized  that  human  nature  in  the  lodg- 
ing-house is  not  essentially  different  from 
human  nature  elsewhere.  It  was  a  real  grief 
to  me  that  my  empty  stomach  forbade  my 
seeing  the  end  of  this  dispute. 


BREWSTER'S  :   A    MISSION    LODGING 

IT  may  be  hard  to  get  a  cheap  bed  even 
when  you  have  the  money  to  pa}-  for  it. 
So  I  found  one  bitter  cold  night,  when  I  had 
fifteen  cents  in  my  pocket.  Moody's,  Riley's, 
and  Whiting's  were  all  full,  and  that  is  how 
I  came  to  go  to  Brewster's  Mission. 

The  mission-hall  was  low-studded  and  ill- 
lighted.  Square  yards  of  painted  Scripture 
texts  —  cheering  and  otherwise  —  adorned 
the  walls.  Prayer  was  being  offered  as  I  en- 
tered, and  I  was  surprised  beyond  measure 
at  the  devotional  spirit  displayed  by  the 
audience.  Nearly  even*  head  was  bowed. 
The  secret  of  the  reverential  attitude  came 
out  at  the  end  of  the  petition,  inasmuch  as 
the  heads  continued  bowed.  What  had 
looked  like  devotion  was  really  drowsiness. 
Between  prayers,  a  floor-walker  did  his  best 
to  wake  up  the  men.  This  he  effected,  when 
they  were  within  reach,  by  a  gentle  rap  on 
the  head  ;  when  they  were  not,  he  was  forced 
to  resort  to  more  heroic  measures,  such  as 


BREWSTER'S  55 

roughly  joggling  the  settee.  The  same  heads 
drooped  again  and  again,  and  now  and  then 
one  emitted  a  series  of  vigorous  snores  before 
the  floor-walker  could  locate  and  rap  it. 

The  platform  part  of  this  meeting  was  of 
the  conventional  city-mission  type,  but  the 
listeners  were  strangely  unresponsive.  Xot 
a  person  asked  for  prayers,  not  one  was 
roused  to  raise  his  hand  to  signify  he  wanted 
"  to  go  up  into  the  air  with  Jesus,"  and  the 
meeting  closed  gloomily  enough  with  proph- 
ecies from  the  desk  of  dire  damnations. 

The  meeting  was  followed  by  an  angry 
attempt  on  the  part  of  the  superintendent 
to  eject  a  man.  The  latter  planted  his  feet 
squarely  on  the  floor  and  refused  to  budge. 
He  was  quite  cool.  "  I'd  have  gone,  if  you'd 
asked  it  decently,"  he  said,  "  but  you  can't 
put  me  out."  Of  course  this  challenge 
brought  on  a  scrimmage.  A  lamp  was  over- 
turned and  broken,  and  the  stove  stood  on 
one  leg  for  several  seconds,  to  the  intense 
delight  of  the  by-standers.  The  frenzied 
superintendent  was  no  match  for  his  self- 
contained  opponent,  and  was  soon  forced  to 
appeal  to  his  floor-walker  with  a  "  Come 
on,  Jameson!  What  are  you  good  for?" 
Then  the  man  went  out  without  resisting, 
though  he  was  easily  a  match  for  the  two. 
"  I  told  you  you  couldn't  put  me  out  if  you 


56      MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

gave  me  fair  play,"  he  said  with  a  laugh, 
from  the  sidewalk. 

That  man,  though  he  is  a  bum,  must  have 
good  stuff  in  him.  In  this  little  affair  he  cer- 
tainly showed  to  better  moral  advantage  than 
the  superintendent. 

There  are  only  a  few  beds  at  Brewster's. 
A  part  of  these  are  rented  at  fifteen  cents 
a  night  to  such  as  are  able  to  pay;  the 
remainder  are  assigned  to  workers  in  a  wood- 
yard  attachment.  In  cold  weather  the  mis- 
sion-room is  used  as  a  dormitory.  Being 
present  at  a  meeting  entitles  a  man  to  a 
settee  and  a  blanket  afterward,  provided 
settees  and  blankets  hold  out.  When  they 
do  not,  there  is  still  the  floor.  Xo  one  is 
turned  away.  I  was  one  of  the  few  who  had 
to  be  satisfied  with  the  floor.  Although  the 
stove  heated  the  air  for  only  a  few  feet 
around  itself,  the  majority  stripped  to  the 
skin  before  wrapping  themselves  in  the  ver- 
min-infested blankets.  "  Backbiters  "  the 
men  call  the  infesters.  "  There's  no  fear  o' 
bein'  lonely,  cf  you  ain't  a  married  man,  with 
one  o'  these  here  comforters  to  sleep  with," 
said  a  stripped  man  as  he  fiercely  scratched 
himself. 

I  had  only  my  arm  for  a  pillow  ;  the  floor 
was  so  hard  it  made  my  bones  ache,  and  so 
icy  I  shivered  with  all  my  clothes  on.  The 


BREWSTER'S  57 

windows  were  all  shut.  The  only  toilet  con- 
venience was  an  uncovered  tin  pail.  The 
stench  was  something  indescribable,  par- 
ticularly when  I  sat  up  to  rest  my  bones, 
for  then  my  nostrils  were  brought  on  to  a 
level  with  the  sleepers.  For  these  reasons, 
as  well  as  because  loud  coughing,  sneezing, 
snoring,  hawking,  and  spitting,  and  other 
disgusting  noises,  were  incessant,  I  could  not 
sleep  more  than  a  few  minutes  at  a  time,  and 
I  should  have  been  very  miserable  had  I  not 
been  within  easy  hearing  of  the  entertain- 
ing gossip  of  the  watchmen  —  broken-down 
specimens  who  receive  little  more  for  their 
work  than  their  own  beds  and  board.  These 
watchmen  had  given  glorious  "  testimonies  " 
from  the  platform  during  the  meeting.  It 
was  morbidly  interesting  to  find  them  adepts 
in  obscenity  and  vulgarity  now  that  the 
superintendent  (their  employer)  was  gone 
and  the  lights  were  turned  down. 


WHITING'S:    A    MODEL   LODGING- 
HOUSE 

WHITING'S,  the  model  lodging-house 
of  the  West  End,  has  a  baggage-room, 
a  bath-tub,  a  shoe-blacking  kit,  newspapers, 
a  few  books  and  magazines,  a  savings  bank,  a 
bulletin  board  of  jobs,  a  restaurant  in  which 
a  very  good  meal  is  given  for  five  cents,  a  vol- 
untary religious  service  on  Sunday  afternoon, 
a  most  elaborate  set  of  rules,  and  a  philan- 
thropic backing. 

When  I  first  became  a  lodger  there,  a  free 
art  exhibition  was  being  held  in  another  part 
of  the  city,  under  the  auspices  of  the  college 
settlements.  The  group  I  joined,  on  enter- 
ing, wrere  talking  about  this  exhibition. 

"  Let's  go  to  the  Art  Gallery,"  said  a  fel- 
low who  answered  to  the  name  of  "  Steve." 

"  It's  too  fur  off;  it's  in  Copley  Square," 
objected  "  Shanks,"  another  of  the  group. 

"  No,  it  ain't  no  such  a  thing,"  retorted 
Steve;  "it's  on  Washington  Street,  almost 
opposite  the  Grand  Dime." 


WHITING'S  59 

"  Oh,  that  sort  of  a  show  !  "  continued  the 
objector;  "there's  plenty  o'  that  sort  down 
on  Hanover  Street,  an'  there's  a  '  Gallery  of 
Anatomy  for  Men  Only'  down  there,  too. 
Yer  c'n  get  in  fer  a  dime;  but  yer  don't  get 
yer  dime's  worth,  I  c'n  tell  yer  that." 

"  Bah !  this  ain't  none  of  your  snides," 
protested  Steve,  stoutly;  "it's  a  real  art 
gallery  with  painted  pictures,  an'  electric 
lights,  an'  catalogues,  an'  everythin'  else,  an' 
it's  free,  too;  don't  I  know?  It's  in  the 
Grand  Army  Buildin',  an'  I'm  a  Grand  Army 
man,  ain't  I?  I  should  think  I  ought  to 
know  if  anybody  does." 

"  Grand  Army  Building !  Why,  that's  the 
old  Franklin  School-house !  "  Shanks  re- 
torted. "  Don't  I  know  as  much  about  that 
as  any  Grand  Army  moke?  I  used  tcr  go 
tcr  school  in  that  w'en  I  was  a  kid.  Nobody 
thought  their  a  likely  boy  like  I  was  'ud 
turn  out  a  dirty  hobo." 

This  bit  of  looking  backward  on  Shanks' 
part  started  a  train  of  reminiscence,  which 
travelled  rapidly  to  the  North  End  ;  and  the 
palmy  days  of  Irish  supremacy,  "when  no 
Dago  'ud  have  dared  to  show  his  face  there," 
were  dwelt  on  with  fond  regret.  Those 
were  the  days  of  Mike  Geary's  saloon,  in 
which  frays,  as  brilliant  and  as  bloody  as  any 
Harry  Fielding  has  portrayed,  were  frequent. 


60       MOOBY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

"  Tim  "  and  "  Buster,"  two  professional  "  slug- 
gers," were  the  heroes  of  most  of  these  tavern 
brawls,  and  their  encounters  were  not  by 
any  means  confined  to  Mike's  saloon. 

"  One  mornin'  "  —  it  was  Steve  who  told  the 
story  —  "we  found  Tim  sleepy-drunk  on  the 
floor  of  his  room,  an'  the  floor  all  over 
blood,  an'  Buster  a-groanin'  under  the  bed, 
with  his  head  rolled  up  in  a  towel.  When 
we  took  the  towel  oft"  of  Buster's  head,  there 
warn't  much  head  to  speak  of,  it  was  so 
mashed  up.  You  see  him  an'  Tim,  bein' 
cronies,  come  in  full  together,  an'  somehow 
or  other  got  to  scrappin'  in  the  night.  There 
warn't  no  feller  round  to  stop  'em,  an'  so  they 
kep'  goin'  it  till  one  of 'em  was  knocked  out. 
That  must  have  been  a  hell  of  a  good  fight! 
An"  to  think  we  all  lost  seein'  it !  I  tell  you, 
boys,  the  North  End  was  the  place  to  live  in 
them  days." 

"  Jack,"  one  of  the  deceased  giants  of 
the  Tim-and-Buster  period,  was  charged  by 
Steve  with  having  sworn  off  the  drink  some 
years  before  he  died. 

Shanks'  indignation  at  this  attempt  to 
slander  the  dead  was  well  expressed  and  was 
indorsed  by  the  others. 

"  Ycr  had  a  grudge  ag'in  Jack,  or  yer 
wouldn't  lie  like  that.  I  wouldn't  be  found 
dead  with  them  slanderous  words  in  me 


WHITING'S  6 1 

mouth.  Yer  say  Jack  didn't  drink  nothin' 
fer  a  long  whiles  afore  he  passed  in  his 
checks?  What  right  have  yer  to  talk  that  a- 
way  about  Jack?  YVarn't  I  with  him  more'n 
anybody,  an'  don't  I  know  he  boozed  so  hard 
he  bled  at  the  mouth,  an'  that  killed  him? 
Ah  !  but  he  was  a  fine,  good  boy,  was  Jack  ! 
There  warn't  none  'round  Mike's  nor  no 
other  saloon  cud  lick  him  except  Tim  an' 
Buster,  an'  I've  seen  him  give  them  a  job." 

After  a  while  the  reminiscence  turned  to 
devices  for  swindling  the  kind-hearted  public. 

Once  upon  a  time,  "Shavings"  provided 
himself  with  a  pair  of  overalls  and  a  car- 
penter's square,  lie  tried  to  sell  the  latter 
under  the  plea  of  being  in  extreme  want  from 
long  unemployment.  The  very  first  man  he 
appealed  to  was  interested.  The  man  re- 
fused to  buy  the  square,  to  be  sure,  but  he 
gave  Shavings  a  dinner  and  a  lodging  and 
the  promise  of  a  good  job  with  a  builder  of 
his  acquaintance,  if  he  would  call  at  his  office 
the  next  day.  Instead  of  showing  up  for 
the  job,  Shavings  continued,  for  as  much  as 
a  week,  on  the  street,  offering  the  square  for 
sale  with  surprisingly  good  results.  Then,  by 
a  very  stupid  mistake,  he  appealed  a  second 
time  to  his  first  victim  and  was  recognized, 
lie  was  prompt  enough  with  the  natural 
excuse  of  having  lost  the  builder's  address, 


62       MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

but  it  would  not  work.  So  he  had  to  promise 
to  leave  the  city  to  avoid  being  turned  over 
to  the  police.  Of  course,  he  didn't  leave. 
Still,  he  was  very  careful  to  keep  his  square 
and  overalls  out  of  sight  for  a  good  long 

O  O  O 

time. 

"Joe"  has  known  better  days,  though  all 
he  has  now  to  show  for  it  is  a  set  of  false 
teeth.  He  has  held  to  these  teeth  religiously 
through  his  later  vicissitudes,  and  they  have 
served  him  more  than  one  good  turn. 

Last  winter,  for  instance,  he  was  befriended 
by  a  lawyer  whom  he  had  struck  for  a  dime 
on  the  street.  The  lawyer  took  him  into  his 
office,  where  he  set  him  dusting  law-books. 
Work  of  this,  or  any  sort,  was  not  at  all  to 
Joe's  mind.  Cash  down  was  what  he  was 
after.  So,  having  first  slipped  the  teeth  from 
his  mouth  to  his  pocket,  unobserved,  he  raised 
a  tremendous  dust  and  made  a  noisy  pretence 
of  sneezing  them  out  the  window.  Diligent 
search  of  the  court  below  revealed  no  teeth, 
of  course.  Joe  was  heart-broken.  Such  a 
loss  as  that  he  could  never  hope  to  repair. 
"  He  wished  he'd  never  touched  the  dirty 
law-books.  He  wished  he'd  never  been  born." 
The  lawyer  was  sorry  such  an  accident  had 
happened  in  his  service,  and  his  sorrow, 
naturally  enough,  took  the  shape  of  money 
for  a  new  set  of  teeth.  Joe  did  not  return 


WHITING'S  63 

from  his  lunch  that  clay.  In  fact,  the  lawyer 
has  not  seen  Joe  since.  Joe,  however, — 
always  from  a  discreet  distance — has  often 
seen  the  lawyer. 

"  Spider,"  in  looks  and  character  every- 
thing that  the  name  implies,  got  the  address 
of  a  well-known  clergyman  from  a  drug-store 
directory  and  went  to  him,  in  a  thread-bare 
condition,  one  bitter  day,  with  a  plea  for 
clothing.  The  clergyman  gave  him  a  note 
to  a  parishioner,  a  wealthy  Marlboro  Street 
physician,  who  fitted  him  out  with  an  expen- 
sive overcoat,  that  had  not  been  worn  more 
than  two  seasons.  The  overcoat  pawned 
easily  for  five  dollars. 

A  more  recent  adventure  of  Spider's  did 
not  turn  out  so  well.  He  found,  near  a  dry- 
goods'  store  on  Summer  Street,  a  small  bundle 
of  red  satin  marked  with  the  Commonwealth 
Avenue  address  for  which  it  was  intended. 
His  first  thought  was  to  pawn  it  or  to  sell  it 
to  a  little  fancy  store  he  knew  of;  his  second 
was  to  carry  it  to  its  owner  for  a  reward  of 
honesty.  The  second  thought  promised  the 
better,  and  it  prevailed.  But  honesty  was 
valued  at  only  ten  cents  by  the  Common- 
wealth Avenue  shopper.  "  Just  paid  my  car- 
fare," Spicier  remarked,  contemptuously.  "  I 
didn't  even  get  a  beer  out  of  it."  He  was  still 
keenly  regretting  his  mistaken  honesty. 


64      MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

"  Smithic's  "  story  was  the  most  detailed 
and  interesting  of  the  lot. 

"  You  boys  all  know  I  have  a  knack  of 
lookin'  fair  an'  aboveboard  an'  talkin'  kind  o' 
soft  and  repentant-like  when  I  wants  any- 
thing. Well,  one  day  last  winter  I  went  out 
to  Cambridge  and  bummed  a  breakfast  at  a 
house  there  '  East  Boston '  told  me  about. 
Then  I  was  thirsty,  so  I  went  to  another 
house  and  asked  for  some  mono}'.  I  sized 
the  woman  up  pretty  quick,  and  played  the 
racket  of  bein'  willin'  an'  anxious  to  work — 
bore  down  on  it  hard,  you  know.  She  was 
so  stirred  up  by  the  yarn  I  spun  her  that  she 
give  me  a  dime  and  invited  me  to  come 
round  again  at  five  o'clock  and  get  a  good 
hot  dinner.  She  didn't  get  no  noonday 
meal,  she  said,  'cause  she  hadn't  no  kids,  and 
her  husband,  he  worked  so  far  away  he 
couldn't  come  home.  You'd  'a'  laughed 
yourself  tired  and  hungry  to  see  how  glad 
she  was  I  wanted  to  work.  To  spare  my 
sensitive  feelin's,  she  kep'  tellin*  me  as  how 
her  husband  would  find  me  some  wood  to 
saw  or  somcthin'  else  to  do  when  he  got 
home,  so  I  needn't  feel  I  was  takin'  charity. 

"  Of  course  I  was  on  hand  at  five  o'clock. 
They  made  me  wash  my  hands  and  set  down 
to  the  table  with  them.  Gee  whiz  !  what 
grub !  That  was  just  about  the  slickest 


WHITING'S  65 

dinner  ever  I  set  my  teeth  into.  I  don't 
s'pose  they's  more'n  two  or  three  o'  you 
blokes  ever  had  a  night  dinner;  that's  the 
kind  this  was,  handed  on  in  sections 
('  courses,'  they  call  'em)  by  a  nigger  wench. 
I  may  as  well  own  up  I  felt  powerful  green 
myself  along  at  first,  an'  wished  I  was  eatin' 
alone  so's  not  to  give  away  what  a  lot  I  was 
puttin'  in.  Hut  they  kep'  pilin'  my  plate  up 
to  make  me  feel  easy,  and  'twarn't  long  'fore 
I  clean  forgot  all  my  fine  manners  and  waded 
in  with  both  feet.  Um-m-m-m  !  I  c'n  taste 
them  orange  fritters  now. 

"They  got  through  catin'  before  I  did,  an' 
set  to  work  with  their  mouths  plannin'  jobs 
for  me  down  cellar  an*  out  in  the  back  yard. 
I  felt  my  appetite  slippin'  away  from  me,  for  I 
seen  I  was  billed  to  be  a  laborin'  man,  sure 
enough,  unless  I  sprung  some  bluff  on  'em 
mighty  spry.  So,  all  to  oncet,  I  made  like  I 
was  took  with  a  big  colic.  I  squirmed  an' 
held  on  to  my  stomach  and  screwed  up  my 
face,  until  they  was  that  frightened  they  laid 
me  out  fiat  on  the  lounge  an'  run  for  the 
brand\r  bottle  —  real  French  stuff,  mind  yer, 
smooth  enough  to  cut  a  figure  eight  on  with 
skates. 

"  '  Poor  man  !  '  they  kcp'  sayin'  ;  '  he  must 
'a'  been  half-starved.'  You  see  the  thouht 


66       MOODY'S    LODGING    IIOUSK 

had  did  me  up.  I  played  otl  I  was  easier  after 
the  brandy,  as,  in  course,  I  was  ;  an'  when  I 
got  strong  enough  to  walk,  they  give  me  more 
brand}',  an'  money  enough  for  a  lodgin'. 

"I  promised  to  call  around  in  the  mornin' 
an'  do  the  work,  if  I  was  well  enough,  but 
I  warn't  well  enough,  an'  I  hain't  been  well 
enough  since.  If  any  of  you's  got  a  hankerin' 
for  the  nicest  feed  goin',  I  can  tell  you  ho\v 
to  find  the  house,  an'  if  you're  cooney,  like 
I  was,  you  won't  have  to  lift  your  hand  for 
the  grub.  Only  you'll  have  to  get  up  a  new 
game.  Colic  won't  work  in  that  house  fur 
some  years  to  come,  I  take  it." 

I  witnessed  a  sad  struggle  with  pride  that 
night  at  Whiting's,  the  struggler  being  a 
clean-looking  man  in  overalls  and  jumper  — 
a  teamster  out  of  a  job.  lie  would  start 
down  the  stairs  and  come  back,  walk  nerv- 
ously through  the  rooms  and  passageways 
and  start  down  the  stairs  again,  only  to  re- 
turn and  repeat  the  entire  process.  "  I  can't 
do  it!  I  can't  beg!  "  he  muttered  as  he 
passed  near  me,  and  with  such  an  accent  of 
despair  that  it  fairly  wrung  my  heart  to  hear 
him.  Finally,  he  sidled  up  to  Smithie,  select- 
ing him  before  the  others  for  his  good- 
natured  face,  and  asked  him,  with  a  rush  of 
color,  for  the  amount  of  a  night's  lodging. 
Smithie  could  not  understand  the  man's  sen- 


WHITING'S  67 

sitivencss  and  told  him  so,  but  he  let  him 
have  the  money  all  the  same.  A  fortnight 
later  the  proud  teamster  was  begging  on  the 
street  as  boldly  as  ever  Smithie  did,  nor  is  it 
likely  he  will  drive  a  team  again. 

Jack  Gordon's  struggle  to  hold  off  from 
the  drink  was  almost  as  harrowing  to  witness. 
There  was  nothing  priggish  about  it.  He 
w-as  so  honestly  earnest  and  humble,  and 
was  known  as  so  brave  and  free-handed  a 
drinker,  that  no  one  thought  of  taunting  him. 
There  was  gay  raillery,  to  be  sure,  but  it 
was  absolutely  without  a  touch  of  contempt, 
for  Jack  was  a  favorite  with  everybody. 

"  The  booze  'as  taken  the  kick  all  out  o' 
me,  boys,"  he  said.  "  \V'y,  w'en  I  was  a  kid, 
I  was  that  tough  I  could  a'  played  out-doors 
bare-skinned  such  weather's  this  an'  never 
felt  it.  Now  I  can't  stan'  nothin'.  The 
least  bit  o'  cold  makes  me  rattle  all  over  like 
an  old  woman  with  the  palsy.  I  might  'a' 
been  still  in  a  good  place  on  the  \Yabash 
Road,  if  I'd  'a'  had  sense  enough  to  let  alone 
the  booze.  But  I'm  goin'  to  try,  boys,  by 
God  I  am,  an'  yer  won't  think  it  mean  o'  me, 
will  yer  now?  " 

The  boys  assured  me  confidentially  it  was 
all  right.  "  Jack's  sure  to  come  round  again 
an'  drink  more'n  any  of  us.  He's  often  took 
this  way,  you  know.  It  don't  last.  I  don't 


68       MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

reckon  he  can  help  it.  Jack  don't  mean  no 
harm." 

On  a  later  visit  I  had  the  good  luck  to  fall 
in  with  two  oldish  men,  who  were  pals  in 
vagrancy.  One  of  them  enlarged  on  the 
warmth  and  unchangeable-ness  of  their  affec- 
tion. His  talk  ran  on  in  this  style  : 

"  Yes,  Dan  and  me  quarrels  sometimes, 
that's  a  fac',  but  there  ain't  no  sense  in  Dan 
and  me  quarrelling.  Dan,  he'd  give  me  the 
last  cent  of  money  he  had,  and  I  —  why,  I'd  do 
the  same  for  Dan,  of  course.  But  we  quar- 
rels all  the  same.  Dan,  he  damns  me  and  I 
damn  Dan.  I  call  Dan  a  liar  and  he  calls 
me  a  liar,  but  it  wouldn't  do  for  nobody  out- 
side to  do  nothing  of  the  kind  to  neither  one 
of  us.  A  long  time  ago  —  that  was  when 
we  was  both  working  for  a  living  before  we 
took  to  hustling  —  there  was  one  mighty 
hard  winter  we  didn't  neither  of  us  have  no 
work.  Dan  had  a  wife  he  set  a  heap  by 
then,  and  two  or  three  kids.  I  didn't  have 
nothing  but  my  own  measly  self  to  look  out 
for.  I  had  a  bit  of  money  left  over  from  my 
wages,  and  I  gave  Dan  five  dollars.  Dan,  he 
got  mad.  Wanted  to  know  what  I  done  it 
for.  'I  ain't  no  beggar,'  says  Dan  —  these 
days  he  ain't  so  techy  about  begging,  not  by 
a  long  shot.  I  says,  '  Damn*,  my  boy,  let  it 
go.  There  ain't  no  use  uettitiLT  riled.  You're 


WHITING'S  69 

a  family  man.  You've  got  a  wife  and  kids. 
I  hain't.'  Dan,  he'd  done  the  same  for  me, 
you  know,  if  ever  I'd  been  crazy  enough  to 
get  hitched.  I  never  talk  to  Dan  about 
owing  and  Dan  don't  to  me.  When  cither 
of  us  has  chink  we  shares  and  shares  alike. 
When  we  hain't  we  sucks  our  thumbs  socia- 
ble-like together.  In  them  clays,  when  Dan's 
wife  was  living,  we  used  to  be  what  you  call 
'  mechanics,'  '  scientific  mechanics,'  and  we 
worked  at  our  trade  like  good,  honest,  re- 
spectable men,  until  the  work  give  out.  Now 
what  are  we,  me  and  Dan?  Just  nothing  at 
all  —  bums.  'Hoboes'  they  call  us.  But 
what's  the  odds?  XVhat's  money,  anyhow? 
Only  the  other  clay  a  man  what  rides  in  a 
carriage  of  his  own,  with  a  nigger  on  the 
box,  axed  me  what  was  '  chewing  my  pard- 
ner,'  meaning  Dan,  just  because  he  was  walk- 
ing a  little  crooked  after  a  whiskey  or  two. 
No  cop  on  the  street  would  have  been  mean 
enough  to  do  that.  \Vhat's  money,  any- 
how? " 

"Jerry,"  a  phenomenally  lean,  good-na- 
tured old  Irishman,  was  the  butt  of  the  es- 
tablishment. Notice  the  sort  of  talk  he  was 
beguiled  with  : 

"  Is  Jerry  going  to  be  in  the  parade  to- 
morrow?" (St.  Patrick's  Day.) 

"  You  bet  vour  life  he  is,  an'  he's   goin'  to 


/o      MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

wear  a  white  plug  hat  with  a  green  silk  hand 
around  it,  or,  if  he  can't  get  silk,  a  band  of 
the  cloth  that  conies  off  that  game  they  play 
with  a  stick.  The  Parker  House  '11  give  him 
a  piece  of  the  cloth  on  their  tables,  'cause 
he's  one  o'  their  best  payin'  customers." 

"  I  hear  he's  goin'  to  ride  in  a  hack  with 
four  horses." 

"  No,  he  ain't  goin'  to  ride  in  no  hack,  but 
there's  a  stable  over  to  the  Back  Bay  has 
promised  to  lend  him  the  loan  of  a  pea-green 
mare  an'  a  Mexican  saddle  all  tied  up  wi' 
grass-green  ribbons  an'  jinglin'  wi'  brass 
bells." 

Jerry  grinned  at  and  acquiesced  in  it  all,  as 
though  it  were  the  very  best  fun  in  the  world 
and  another  than  himself  were  the  victim 

All  efforts,  however,  to  cajole  him  into 
singing  an  Irish  song  were  bootless.  When 
pressed,  he  blushed  and  fidgeted  and  refused 
as  coyly  as  a  girl.  An  Irishman  beside  him 
thought  to  start  him  off  in  spite  of  himself 
by  singing  a  few  liars  of  a  favorite  Irish  air  in 
a  soft,  high  voice.  Jerry  felt  the  full  force 
of  the  temptation.  He  swayed  back  and  forth, 
beating  time  with  his  whole  body  and  seemed 
several  times  on  the  point  of  vocal  expres- 
sion ;  but,  for  all  that,  he  did  not  vocali/e. 
He  was  quite  too  cunning  to  be  trapped  by 
anv  such  trick. 


WHITING'S  71 

A  fat,  nervous,  little  French  notion  pedler 
afforded  the  room  much  sport ;  but  he  did 
not,  like  Jerry,  take  the  raillery  in  good 
part.  His  irritability  so  delighted  his  perse- 
cutors, some  of  whom  were  intoxicated,  that 
they  began  to  emphasize  their  jokes  by  physi- 
cal means  (slaps  on  the  back,  etc.),  and  the 
desk-clerk  was  finally  obliged  to  interfere  in 
Frenchy's  behalf.  Such  a  fussy,  fastidious 
little  fellow  as  he  was  quite  out  of  place  in 
the  midst  of  the  rough  jocularity  of  a  cheap 
lodging-house,  though  he  appeared  contented 
enough  as  soon  as  he  was  \vell  rid  of  his  tor- 
mentors. He  deftly  rearranged  his  pcdler's 
pack,  darned  a  pair  of  stockings,  carefully 
brushed  his  tiny  "  peanut  derb,"  cutaway  the 
frayed  edges  of  his  collar  and  scrubbed  its 
soiled  spots.  Then  he  took  from  his  pockets 
and  spread  out  on  a  newspaper  a  little  meal 
of  bread  and  cheese.  Finally  he  rolled  and 
smoked  a  cigarette  with  the  air  of  a  Sybarite. 

Although  the  office-clerk  felt  it  his  duly 
to  rescue  the  little  Frenchman  when  the  fun 
waxed  too  furious,  he  himself  put  up  a  prac- 
tical joke  on  Steve,  the  irony  of  which  was 
much  appreciated.  Calling  Steve  to  his 
desk  he  offered  to  pay  him  well  if  he  would 
carry  a  pair  of  worn  shoes  to  the  nearest 
cobbler's.  Steve  went  willingly.  On  his  re- 
turn he  was  rewarded  with  a  pint  bottle  half 


72       MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

full  of  whiskey,  which  he  accepted  with  a 
curiously  crestfallen  air.  It  seems  that  the 
night  before  Steve  had  put  under  his  pillow 
a  pint  of  whiskey,  which  he  had  forgotten  to 
take  out  in  the  morning.  This  whiskey,  in 
the  natural  course  of  things,  had  fallen  into 
the  hands  of  the  desk-clerk,  and  he  had  taken 
toll  of  it  to  the  extent  of  a  full  half  pint  before 
making  up  his  mind  to  return  it. 

Soon  after  this  a  wonderful  little  scene  was 
enacted.  A  long-armed,  big-handed,  shovel- 
footed,  cross-eyed,  unshaven,  pimply  monster, 
of  not  more  than  nineteen  years,  called 
"  Loon\',"  because  he  was  only  half-witted, 
took  a  small  plug  of  tobacco  from  his  coat 
pocket,  and  with  a  display  of  tragic  emotion 
(as  superfluous  as  that  of  a  lover  in  burning 
the  letters  of  a  discarded  mistress)  placed  it 
in  the  hands  of  one  of  his  comrades.  Then, 
fishing  out  from  somewhere  in  the  depths  of 
his  trousers,  a  soiled,  crumpled  scrap  of  paper, 
he  borrowed  a  stub  of  a  pencil  from  another 
comrade,  and  begged  a  third  to  write  down 
plain  on  the  paper  these  words  :  "  On  Wednes- 
day, the  sixteenth  of  March,  the  day  before 
St.  Patrick's,  Loony  Horrigan  gave  up  the 
chew."  When  Loony  was  satisfied  that  the 
writing  (which  he  could  not  read)  was 
properly  done,  he  made  a  tour  of  the  room, 
proudly  displaying  his  pledge.  Then  he 


WHITING'S  73 

stowed  it  away  in  his  vest  pocket  as  solemnly 
as  if  it  were  a  keepsake  locket.  Several  times 
later  in  the  evening  I  saw  him  take  it  out, 
spread  it  flat  on  his  knee,  and  fondly  trace 
the  lines  of  the  writing  with  his  fingers. 
Whence  the  impulse  to  such  a  grotesque 
ceremony  of  abjuration  came  to  this  poor, 
addled  brain  it  is  idle  to  surmise. 


THE     FAIRMOUNT     HOUSE  :     THE 
WORST    OF    THE    LOT 


THE  Fairmount  House  bears  a  particu- 
larly hard  name.  There  walls  are 
blacker,  windows  duskier,  sheets  yellower, 
wash-basins  greasier,  towels  stickier,  and 
floor  accumulations  of  bacteria-filled  saliva 
older  than  in  any  other  lodging-house  of 
Boston.  Worse  still,  bed-bugs  and  fleas 
are  there  supplemented  by  the  far  more 
noxious  body-lice. 

The  missionaries  are  down  on  the  Fair- 
mount  House  because  it  refuses  them  the 
privileges  of  exhortation  and  tract-distribu- 
tion. The  better  class  of  lodgers  shun  it 
because  of  its  disorder  and  dirt.  And  the 
police  call  it  "  a  nest  of  thieves."  Its  noto- 
riety is  amply  deserved. 

It  is  altogether  the  worst  of  a  bad  lot. 
Yet,  with  a  certain  class  it  is  very  popular. 
Indeed,  I  have  found  it  far  from  easy  to  get 
a  bed  there.  Several  times  I  was  turned 
awav  because  every  bed  was  taken,  and  I 


THE    FAIRMOUNT    HOUSE        75 

barely  succeeded,  finally,  by  applying  very 
early  in  the  evening.  The  desk-clerk  at 
first  shook  his  head,  then  relented.  "  Yes, 
I'll  give  you  a  bed,"  he  said,  "just  to  teach 
the  other  fellows  a  lesson.  Some  of  them 
will  loaf  around  till  eleven  o'clock  at  night 

o 

before  they  step  up  to  pay  for  their  beds, 
and  then  expect  them  to  be  ready.  I'm  not 
going  to  reserve  beds  that  way  any  more, 
and  the  sooner  they  find  it  out  the  better  for 
them." 

There  were  several  settees  in  the  office, 
but  no  chairs,  settees  having  been  put  in  the 
place  of  chairs,  for  the  same  reason,  it  may 
be,  that  the  second  Napoleon  substituted 
asphalt  for  paving-stones  in  Paris  —  to  avoid 
•unices.  I  took  the  only  available  seat. 
This  was  next  a  settee  completely  occupied 
by  a  sleeping  man  whose  bare  feet  were  very 
black  from  walking  on  the  floor.  The  feet 
were  towards  me  and  near  me. 

The  walls  were  free  from  printed  rules 
and  Scripture  texts,  and  this  was  a  real  re- 
lief. There  is  no  check  on  revelry  except 
that  which  is  imposed  by  the  fear  of  attract- 
ing the  police  from  the  street.  This  lodging- 
house,  at  least,  has  no  taint  of  hypocrisy. 

Only  a  few  of  the  men  present  had  the 
bearing  of  honest  laborers.  The  major'y 
had  all  the  marks  of  vagrancv ;  some  were 


76      MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

unquestionably  "  crooks."  Of  the  last  class, 
a  small  group,  mostly  young  men,  was  hold- 
ing an  earnest  consultation  in  a  corner. 
They  cautiously  employed  whispers  and 
undertones.  Still  I  was  able  to  catch  scraps 
of  their  talk  ;  enough  to  make  it  plain  they 
were  busily  devising  swindles  and  other 
knaveries.  These  men  were  veritable  citi- 
zens of  the  world,  quite  as  familiar  with  New 
York,  Chicago,  San  Francisco,  Glasgow, 
Liverpool,  and  London,  as  with  Boston. 

Their  business  attended  to,  this  whisper- 
ing row  of  crooks  began  to  circulate  a  brown 
bottle,  and  soon  they  were  talking  loudly  on 
indifferent  themes.  They  compared  the  jails 
and  prisons  of  various  sections,  displaying  as 
much  pride  of  connoisseurship  as  other  men 
do  in  their  talk  of  wines  and  horses.  One 
prison,  for  instance,  was  especially  undesir- 
able because  the  food  was  bad  and  not  even 
your  most  intimate  friends  or  relatives  were 
ever  allowed  to  see  you ;  another  was  es- 
pecially desirable  because  you  had  excellent 
food,  could  see  all  the  company  you  chose, 
and  were  liberally  supplied  with  pipes  and 
tobacco.  And  so  on. 

That  these  men  were  aware  of  the  bad 
name  of  the  Fairmount  House  was  plain 
enough.  "  Once  you  spend  a  single  damned 
night  in  this  lodging-house,  you're  set  down 


THE    EAIRMOUNT    HOUSE        77 

by  the  cops  as  a  stcaler  or  a  bum,"  said  East 
Boston,  and  no  one  of  the  group  thought  of 
denying  that  he  was  right  and  that  the  cops 
were  right,  too. 

After  a  time  they  somehow  fell  discussing 
the  possibility  of  passing  foreign  coins  in 
the  United  States.  In  this  discussion  some 
had  recourse  to  experience  and  some  to 
a  priori  reasoning.  The  evident  leader  of 
the  gang  waited,  with  an  air  of  forbearance, 
till  all  the  others  had  talked  themselves 
out;  then,  without  deigning  an  appeal  to 
cither  experience  or  reason,  summed  the 
case  up  and  settled  it  with  a  single  dog- 
ma. "  It  can't  be  done.  Taking  foreign 
coin?  That's  broker's  business,  you  damned 
idiots."  Just  at  this  point,  by  a  remark- 
able coincidence,  a  man  entered  and  tried 
to  make  the  clerk  give  him  a  bed  for  an 
English  shilling.  The  clerk  refused  flatly, 
whereat  our  dogmatic  friend  was  jubilant, 
plainly  looking  upon  the  clerk's  refusal  as  a 
direct  interposition  of  Providence  in  his  favor. 
"There,  do  you  see  that?"  he  cried  ;  "that 
proves  it.  Didn't  I  tell  you?  Why,  it's 
broker's  business  ;  of  course  it  is." 

Later  in  the  evening,  this  man  took  me 
one  side,  under  pretence  of  asking  for  a 
chew  of  tobacco  ;  in  reality,  for  the  sake  of 
sounding  me.  It  may  have  been  mv  tart 


78       MOODV'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

answers  to  his  questions,  or  it  may  have 
been  my  disreputable  trousers.  At  any  rate, 
whatever  influenced  him,  he  was  quickly 
satisfied  that  I  was  "  solid."  lie  promised 
to  let  me  in  on  the  ground  floor  of  a  scheme 
that  would  fill  my  pockets  with  money  in  no 
time,  and  was  just  about  to  do  so  when  our 
attention  was  diverted  to  "  Chubby,"  and  — 
I  am  still  poor. 

Chubby  is  a  sensual-eyed  pugilist.  He 
looks  too  much  of  a  porker  to  be  a  pugilist, 
but  he  is  really  a  marvel  with  his  fists.  \Vlien 
he  yarns  about  one  of  his  fights,  nothing  else 
goes  on  —  the  whole  room  is  breathless. 

Listen  to  Chubby  yarning: 

"  Yer  knows  Meg  Riley,  the  old  girl  wid 
the  pink  rims  to  her  eyes  like  a  ferret's  got 
an'  the  water  siz/lin'  out  of  'em,  an'  the  cop- 
per-wire hair;  her  w'at  hung  'round  Foley's 
all  last  fall  fer  any  sort  o'  boo/e  yer'd  tip 
her. —  Yi>u  needn't  look  so  set  up,  Bruiser 
McFee,  just  because  she's  '  been  complaisant 
to  yer,'  as  the  novel-books  say  it.  Many's 
the  jay  as  the  old  bitch's  '  been  complaisant 
to  '  before  yer,  fer  a  five-cent  whiskey  ;  an'  she 
cost  you  a  quarter,  an'  the  whiskey  fer  luck, 
an'  that  yer  can't  deny.  —  Well,  I '11  be  damned 
cf  there's  a  female  refuge  in  Boston  w'at  hain't 
done  its  part  to  set  Meg  up  in  business  again, 
w'en  she's  been  played  out,  though  little  they 


THE   FAIRMOUNT   HOUSE        79 

knows  it.  Meg's  that  sly  they  don't  smoke 
her,  no  more  nor  Bruiser  here  does. 

"Just  now,  they  tell  me,  Meg's  took  a  suite 
at  the  Charclon  Street  Temporary  Home,  one 
of  her  favorite  hotels.  Yer  see  she's  got 
inter  bad  shape  lately  from  hcllin'  'round  wid 
Bruiser  an'  a  lot  o'  scaly  hoboes  w'at  can't 
show  no  clean  bill  o'  health  like  I  can.  She's 
not  much  shakes  now,  I  c'n  tell  yer,  even  if 
Bruiser  here  does  think  he  picked  a  whole 
crate  o'  Crawford  peaches  w'en  he  got  a  holt 
of  her. 

"  But  w'en  Meg  first  give  up  the  bloods  fer 
the  bums,  yer  c'n  jest  bet  she  was  one  o'  the 
rinest,  an'  I  never  had  a  better  t\vo  summers 
than  the  ones  she  took  to  the  road  wid  me. 
She  was  that  faithful  to  me,  too,  as  you 
couldn't  believe,  considerin'  of  her  past. 
\Y'y,  barrin'  the  fac'  we  didn't  have  no  kids, 
'twas  that  domestic  'twas  most  ekal  ter  bein' 
a  family  man,  an'  havin'  yer  pew  in  church 
an'  pay  in'  yer  poll  tax,  an'  eatin'  baked  beans 
reg'lar  Saturday  nights  an'  fish  balls  Sunday 
mornin's. 

"  'Twas  all  along  o'  her  I  had  my  last  fight. 
Yer  see  ther'  was  a  stranger  chap  come  inter 
Foley's  one  night  dressed  like  a  sport.  Meg 
up  an'  asked  him  fer  a  drink  (as  is  always 
the  privilege  of  a  lady)  as  perlite  as  ever  she 
did  anythin'  in  her  life,  an'  Meg  warn't  never 


8o      MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

no  slouch  for  manners.  An}'  hobo'd  'avc 
given  it  to  her  if  he'd  had  it  ter  give,  but 
this  washed-out  pimp  of  a  sport  insulted  her 
straight  to  her  face. 

"  He  looked  'round  waitin'  fer  us  fellers  ter 
laugh,  an'  I  waited  fer  him  ter  'pologize. 
Well,  we  didn't  laugh  and  he  didn't  'pologize 
—  that  is,  not  then.  Quick's  he  seen  he'd 
made  a  mistake,  though,  he  took  kind  o' 
dazed  like,  an'  begun  backin'  away,  a  feelin' 
fer  the  door.  Then  I  lit  on  ter  'im,  an'  I 
stuck  to  'im  like  a  puppy  sticks  to  a  root  till 
yer  couldn't  tell  no  more  by  lookin'  at  'im 
w'ether  he  was  a  sport  or  old  Foley's  mop 
rag,  he  was  that  juicy.  Much's  ever's  he 
cud  get  breath  ter  'pologize  or  find  where 
on  his  face  his  mouth  was  ter  do  it  wid.  If 
he  didn't  sleep  that  night  an'  one  or  two 
more  at  the  City  Hospital,  my  name  ain't 
Chubby  Bronson. 

"  Wile  I  was  a-doin'  the  fightin',  Meg  was 
that  wild  fer  fear  I'd  get  hurted  it  took  three 
men  ter  holt  her  off.  Ef  she'd  got  a  show  at 
that  sport  she'd  a  clawed  his  eyeballs  out  an' 
chawed  'em  mush}"  an'  spit  'em  back  in  his 
face.  God  !  but  the  old  girl's  got  life  in  her 
yet,  if  she  does  have  to  go  into  dry  dock  for 
repairs  middlin'  often!  I'm  no  hand  to  pick- 
up a  row"  (it  is  true  that  Chubby  rarely 
fights  nowadays  except  for  a  woman),  "  but 


THE   FAIRMOUNT   HOUSE        81 

if  Bruiser  here,  or  any  other  dorg-gasted  mick, 
don't  be  respectful  wid  Meg,  he'll  find  himself 
a  bunkin'  in  the  hospital  same  way's  that  sport. 
Meg  can't  hold  out  much  longer,  'thout  she 
strikes  an  easier  gait,  an'  she's  goin'  to  be 
treated  square  w'ile  she  lasts,  an'  don't  you 
think  she  ain't." 

Chubby's  half-noble  tale  called  out  tales 
of  winter  debaucheries  in  low  dance-halls  and 
hotels,  cheap  boarding-houses,  and  bawdy- 
houses,  and  summer  wickedness  under  the 
stars ;  tales  that  may  not  be  told  for  their 
vileness  —  even  sodomy  had  its  leering  en- 
thusiasts. 

This  sickening  display  of  filth,  for  its  own 
sake,  was  followed  by  a  grotesque  religious 
conversation  between  a  Catholic  Irish-Amer- 
ican and  a  colored  Baptist.  The  colored 
man  did  not  wish  to  talk,  but  he  was  forced 
into  saying  a  few  words  by  the  aggressive 
disputatiousness  of  the  Celt. 

"  I  never  seen  only  two  niggers,"  the  latter 
began,  "  I'd  call  half-men.  All  the  rest  o' 
the  niggers  '11  razor  yer  when  yer  back's 
turned.  These  two  was  priests.  They's  no 
niggers  good  only  nigger  priests.  Ef  you 
niggers  'cl  only  get  ter  be  Catholics  yer  might 
make  some  decent  sort  o'  men  o'  yourselves." 

Here  the  Baptist  objected  to  being  called  a 
"nigger." 


82       MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

"Well,  that's  what  y'  arc,  ain't  ye?  "  con- 
tinued the  other.  "  Yer  ought  ter  be  glad 
ter  be  called  what  y'  are.  Ain't  I  Irish,  and 
ain't  I  glad  ter  be  called  Irish?  No,  yer 
can't  come  none  o'  yer  high-flappin'  airs  on 
me.  Yer  can't  pull  me  down,  ef  I  am  a 
muck." 

"  Ah  wan'  yo'  t'  talk  sumfin'  else'n  'ligion. 
Ah  don'  nevah  talk  no  'ligion  wif  no  man 
nor  no  pol'tics." 

"Who  said  anythin'  'bout  politics?  Poli- 
tics hain't  got  nothin'  ter  do  with  it.  Relig- 
ion's got  ter  do  with  good  men  ;  politics  with 
God  damned  frauds.  An'  you  here  try  ter 
switch  me  off  on  ter  politics,  'cause  yer  hain't 
got  the  sand  to  talk  'bout  the  kind  o'  religion 
you've  got.  Yer  call  yourself  Baptist,  an' 
think  Baptist's  got  somethin'  ter  do  with 
religion.  Baptist!  It  hain't  got  nothin' more 
to  do  with  religion  than  politics  has.  Who's 
the  great  man  yer  can  name's  a  Baptist? 
John  L.  ain't  no  Baptist,  an'  Corbctt  ain't  no 
Baptist  —  yer  know  that  ycrself —  nor  nobody 
else  that  ever  did  anythin'  worth  talkin'  of. 
Now,  then,  what  is  Baptist?  Can  yer  tell  me 
that?  \Vhat  does  Baptist  signifercate?  Efyer 
asked  me  what  Catholic  is,  I  could  tell  yer." 

"Ah  a'n't  a-goin'  t'  ask  yo',"  was  the  cun- 
ning reply.  "  Yo'  talk  to'  much  wifout  no 
askin'.' 


THE    FAIRMOUNT    HOUSE        83 

"Well,  I  c'n  tell  yer,  just  the  same,  an'  I 
want  yer  to  onderstand  I  know  all  about  what 
Christian'ty  is,  ef  I  am  a  muck,  and  Chris- 
tian'ty  hain't  got  nothin'  to  do  with  Baptist, 
that's  sure.  That's  sure." 

The  Baptist  made  no  answer,  but  clapped 
his  hands  to  his  ears  and  beat  a  hasty  retreat 
for  the  street. 

There  was  a  melancholy  interest  about 
finding  people  on  this  low  plane  of  life  sure 
of  their  own  orthodoxy  and  burning  with  zeal 
to  damn  others  for  heresy. 

The  elaborate  method  by  which  confusion 
and  dispute  are  avoided,  in  taking  the  beds 
at  the  Fairmount,  is  worthy  of  a  better  house. 
When  a  lodger  is  ready  for  bed,  the  desk- 
clerk  gives  him  a  number  and  takes  charge 
of  all  his  belongings  except  the  clothes  on 
his  back.  An  employe  named  Peters,  stationed 
at  the  foot  of  the  stairs,  shouts  this  number 
to  another  employe  named  Nolan,  stationed  at 
the  head  of  the  stairs.  Nolan  repeats  it  in  a 
loud  voice  for  accuracy's  sake,  and  conducts 
the  lodger  to  his  proper  cot. 

The  experienced  lodger,  after  undressing, 
carefully  tucks  all  his  clothes  —  even  his 
shoes  —  under  the  pillow  and  mattress.  At 
Moody's  it  is  safe  enough  to  leave  your  be- 
longings on  the  office  benches  through  the 
day,  and  your  clothes  on  the  bed-room  floor 


84      MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

at  night.  But,  at  Moody's,  is  only  one  gang. 
At  the  Fairmount  House  are  several  gangs, 
and  they  prey  on  each  other  mercilessly. 
Woe  to  the  man  who  prowls  about — how- 
ever innocently —  after  the  lights  are  blown 
out  for  the  night !  Ten  to  one  he  will  be 
roughly  handled.  According  to  a  Fairmount 
House  tradition,  a  somnambulist  was  nearly 
pummelled  to  death  there  once,  before  expla- 
nations could  be  made. 

Still,  bed-time  at  this  house  did  not  mean 
sleeping-time,  by  any  means.  The  fun, 
begun  below,  waxed  more  uproarious,  if 
possible,  above.  The  swearing,  drinking, 
and  smoking  went  on.  There  was  coarse, 
half-witty  chaffing  from  bed  to  bed,  some- 
times across  the  room,  and  there  were  pillow 
fights,  and  rough,  good-natured  scufflings 
by  stark-naked  men.  At  midnight,  after 
about  an  hour  of  this  sort  of  revelry,  which, 
low-lived  as  it  is,  yet  goes  far  to  atone  for 
the  squalor  of  the  surroundings,  we  were 
ready  to  sleep. 

Ready,  but  not  permitted.  For  fully  an 
hour  and  a  half  we  were  kept  awake  by  the 
crazy  garrulity  of  an  aged  man.  At  first  his 
ape-like  jabbcrings  were  diverting;  later,  as 
we  got  really  anxious  to  sleep  and  could  not, 
our  amusement  naturally  turned  to  anger. 
But  no  threats  of  violence  affected  this  talking- 


THE    FAIRMOUNT    HOUSE        85 

machine  in  the  least.  The  more  we  tried  to 
shut  him  up,  the  firmer  he  held  his  right  to 
"  thalk  far  ter  kape  awake  "  until  2  :  30,  when 
he  had  to  go  to  West  Somerville  to  "  take  a 
job  in  a  shtable."  He  also  claimed  plenary 
indulgence  on  the  ground  that  within  a 
month  he  was  going  to  be  shipped  to  San 
Francisco  at  the  expense  of  a  son-in-law, 
though  what  that  had  to  do  with  the  case  we 
were  quite  unable  to  see. 

"  Shure  an'  oi'm  goin'  out  at  har-r-f-past 
two,  oi  am,  now.  Oi'll  be  tin  thousand  miles 
beyant  here,  fine  on  me  way  to  San  Fan- 
chusco,  on  the  inside  av  a  moonth,"  he  kept 
repeating. 

The  old  man  was  too  feeble  to  be 
"slugged,"  but  the  night-watchman  (whose 
threats  availed  as  little  as  our  own  to  stop 
the  old  fellow),  fearing  violence  to  himself  if 
sve  were  exasperated  much  further,  ordered 
him  out  of  the  house.  He  was  willing 
enough  to  give  up  his  warm  bed  for  the  side- 
walk, but  not  to  stop  talking.  In  this  respect 
he  was  game  to  the  last.  He  was  allowed, 
before  starting,  to  cover  his  wrinkled  naked- 
ness with  his  shirt.  In  this  simple  process 
he  managed  to  consume  much  time,  and  his 
tongue  wagged  faster  than  ever.  Conse- 
quently he  was  directed  to  take  the  rest  of 
his  clothes  in  his  arms  and  finish  dressing  in 
the  office. 


86      MOODY'S   LODGING   HOUSE 

At  the  head  of  the  stairs  he  suddenly  be- 
thought himself  of  his  shoes,  which  he  had 
purposely  left  behind  under  his  pillow,  and 
in  the  journey  to  and  from  his  bed,  this 
cunning  of  his  made  necessary,  he  "  trailed 
clouds"  of  talk,  of  course.  Even  when  he 
was  got  into  the  office,  his  high-pitched, 
rhythmical  voice  continued  to  be  heard  in 
the  sleeping-room.  How  long  I  cannot  say, 
for  it  served  as  my  lullaby  —  is,  in  truth,  the 
last  thing  I  remember  of  the  night,  except  an 
occasional  twinge  of  pain,  as  the  bite  of  an 
insect,  of  more  prowess  than  the  common 
run,  roused  me  into  a  brief  semi-conscious- 
ness. 


APPRECIATION 

ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON  claims 
to  have  known  a  beggar-tramp  in  Scot- 
land whose  chief  diversion  was  reading  and 
exploiting  the  English  poets,  notably  Shel- 
ley and  Keats.  I  have  not  yet  discovered 
an  American  lodging-house  tramp  with  a 
Shelley-Keats  enthusiasm,  but  I  do  not  de- 
spair of  doing  so,  for  I  have  had  among  my 
lodging-house  room-mates  several  men  who 
showed  traces  of  refinement.  Indeed,  the 
intelligence  of  the  lodging-house  tramp  seems 
to  be  very  much  underrated. 

He  can  usually  read  and  write,  and  does 
read  the  newspapers.  Within  the  range  of 
his  profession  (a  somewhat  narrow  range,  it 
is  true)  his  perception  of  the  workings  of  the 
human  heart  and  mind  is  keen,  almost  un- 
erring. The  lodging-house,  in  which  he 
passes  a  large  part  of  his  time,  affords  abun- 
dant mental  friction.  Every  conceivable 
topic  is  freely  discussed  there,  where  pro- 
priety bars  out  nothing.  I  subjoin  a  list 


88       MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

of  the  topics  of  a  single  day:  Millionaires, 
John  Boyle  O'Reilly,  the  suppression  of 
prostitution,  Barman's  Circus,  the  Pope's 
last  Encyclical,  President  Cleveland,  David 
B.  Hill,  the  characters  of  aldermen,  the  Sal- 
vation Army,  the  Turco-Russian  War,  Sun- 
day closing  of  saloons,  the  Australian  ballot, 
the  Corbett-Kilrain  fight,  the  expulsion  of 
the  Jews  from  Russia,  and  Home  Rule  for 
Ireland. 

Points  of  criminal  la\v  which  only  legal 
experts  are  able  to  decide,  are  favorite  sub- 
jects of  debate.  Over  the  right  to  self- 
defence  I  have  seen  a  room  divided  into 
three  boisterous  factions:  i.  Those  who 
held  that  you  must  do  all  you  could  to  get 
away  before  you  had  a  right  to  fight.  2. 
Those  who  held  that  you  could  "  slug  "  back 
if  you  were  "  slugged,"  but  that  you  could 
not  use  a  dangerous  weapon  unless  you  were 
attacked  with  a  dangerous  weapon.  3.  Those 
who  held  you  could  fight  in  any  way  you 
pleased.  The  faith  of  the  disputants  is  al- 
ways sufficient  for  much  betting,  but,  as  in 
disputes  the  world  over,  a  conclusion  is  rarely 
reached. 

Thus  the  men  arc,  in  effect,  members  of  a 
flourishing  debating  club,  holding  nightly 
meetings.  Each,  without  conscious  effort, 
becomes  a  repository  for  the  facts  and  ideas 


APPRECIATION  89 

belonging  to  all  the  others.  That  these  facts 
and  ideas  are  often  of  slight  value  is  true 
enough,  but  so,  for  that  matter,  are  the  facts 
and  ideas  bandied  about  in  "  society."  And 
yet  "  society,"  whatever  its  defects,  docs 
unquestionably  develop  versatility  and  ready 
wit.  It  is  the  same  with  the  lodging-house. 

Furthermore,  the  tramp-lodgers  find  the 
Public  Library  a  handy  place  to  take  naps 
in,  at  the  cost  of  a  modicum  of  reading. 
Above  all,  they  have  the  unhampered  leisure 
which  we  are  often  told  is  indispensable  to 
culture. 

They  display  many  interesting  human 
qualities.  There  is  real  esprit  de  corps  among 
them.  The  social  obligation  is  heartily  ac- 
cepted. "  Bearing  one  another's  burdens  " 
means  more  to  the  average  lodger  than  to  the 
average  church  member.  "  You  wouldn't 
pick  a  man  up  and  give  him  a  drink  if  you 
found  him  layin'  pegged  out  in  the  street. 
No,  you  wouldn't,  not  even  if  you  had  had 
a  good  day,"  I  heard  one  lodger  say  to 
another  in  a  white  heat  of  anger.  Not  to 
share  one's  luck  with  one's  pals  is  the  only 
unpardonable  sin. 

For  ail  that,  there  arc  hard  and  fast  class 
distinctions.  The  man  who  pays  twenty  cents 
for  a  bed  lets  no  chance  slip  to  display  his 
superiority  over  the  fifteen-cent  lodger,  and 


90      MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

so  on  down,  and  the  less  ignorant  have  a 
comical  way  of  patronizing  the  more  igno- 
rant. 

Reflections  upon  the  respectability  of  the 
tramp  fraternity  are  bitterly  resented.  My 
Scotch  friend,  Sandy,  happening  to  overhear 
a  lodging-house  keeper  call  his  patrons 
"  hoboes,"  was  almost  beside  himself  with 
rage.  "  I  dinna  care  what  we  call  oursel's," 
he  blurted  out;  "  but  it's  no  right  for  him  to 
talk  about  hoboes.  He  couldna  keep  this 
place  gaein'  but  for  you  and  me,  wha  hustle 
on  the  street.  It's  no  right !  "  There  was 
an  amusing  assertion  of  self-respect  on 
another  occasion,  when  one  of  the  men  vent- 
ured to  speak  slightingly  of  the  lodging- 
house.  "  We're  glad  enough  to  get  it,  you 
know  that  yourself,  and  you  ought  not  to 
run  clown  the  House.  It's  just  as  respectable 
as  the  big  hotels.  Don't  we  pay  our  way? 
They  say  the  cops  are  goin'  to  bag  us,  if  we 
don't  quit  hustlin'  on  the  street.  I'd  like  to 
see  the  cop  that  could  call  me  down  for 
strikin'  a  man  for  a  nickel.  I'd  say  it  to  his 
nose,  too." 

The  sense  of  justice  is  crude  but  strong. 
There  was  a  general  outburst  of  righteous 
indignation  when  a  newspaper  item  was  read 
aloud  announcing  exceptionally  light  sen- 
tences for  two  murderers.  "  It's  a  dirtv 


APPRECIATION  91 

shame  !  Why,  tramps  get  more  than  that ! 
Tramps  are  getting  treated  worse  than  mur- 
derers nowadays,  if  that  in  '  The  Globe  '  is 
true,  and  nobody  can  say  tramps  does  any- 
body any  harm." 

Criticism  of  penal  institutions  is  always 
satirical  —  sometimes  more  satirical  than  just. 
F'or  instance,  this  on  the  prison  physician  : 

"  He  just  takes  a  look  at  you  when  you're 
sick,  and  for  all  of  him  you'll  be  dead  in  half 
an  hour.  What  does  he  care?  You're 
nothin'  to  him.  You're  lucky,  I'm  thinkin', 
if  he  don't  give  you  medicine  to  kill  you,  so 
he  can  have  the  fun  of  cuttin'  you  up. 
That's  what  he  likes  best  of  all,  the  bloody 
butcher." 

Sensitiveness  to  slight  or  insult  is  at  once 
greater  and  less  than  elsewhere,  which  really 
amounts  to  saying  it  works  along  different 
lines.  Direct  personal  abuse  is  ignored,  while 
serious  imputations  against  character  arc  dis- 
cerned in  the  most  trivial  and  impersonal  re- 
marks. Once  discerned,  these  imputations 
are  resented  by  words,  and  not  blows,  for 
the  most  part.  Threatened  blows  rarely  ma- 
terialize. 

Lodgers  are,  oftener  than  not,  polite  in 
their  dealings  with  men,  and  chivalrous  in 
their  treatment  of  women.  In  lines  formed 
for  the  receipt  of  food  or  raiment  from 


92       MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

bureaus  of  charity,  the  women  are  unhesi- 
tatingly given  precedence  by  them. 

In  the  last  analysis,  the  lodgers'  code  of 
honor  is  not  essentially  different  from  that 
which  prevails  in  the  world  of  trade,  and, 
granted  the  code,  they  are  as  loyal  to  it  as 
other  people  are  to  theirs.  Even  the  crooks 
of  the  Fairmount  House  were  fierce  in  their 
denunciation  of  "  a  man  who  would  sell 
himself  for  a  dollar,"  when  it  looked  as 
though  a  lodger,  who  had  been  sent  with 
that  amount  on  an  errand,  was  not  coming 
back. 

They  are  philosophers,  these  lodgers,  and 
their  philosophy  is  not  to  be  despised.  They 
literally  take  life  as  they  find  it  and  question 
not  the  mystery  of  the  future.  If  business  is 
bad  to-day,  they  arc  not  depressed.  They 
simply  shrug  their  shoulders  with  a  "  Well, 
we'll  have  to  hustle  to-morrow."  "  Don't  go 
a-wranglin'  about  that.  There  are  plenty  of 
tens  in  the  street,"  I  heard  one  of  the  adepts 
say  to  two  comrades  who  were  disputing 
about  ten  cents  in  change  ;  and  that  settled 
the  dispute. 

Furthermore,  they  are  so  consistent  in  tak- 
ing life  as  they  find  it  that  they  appreciate 
the  humor  of  their  very  hardships.  "  Never 
mind,  it's  only  for  to-night,  we'll  take  apart- 
ments in  the  Yendome  to-morrow,"  counselled 


APPRECIATION  93 

Fatty  when  Snipe  cursed  the  cold  beds  at 
Gunn's.  The  very  audacity  of  Fatty's  sug- 
gestion supplied  inordinate  mirth  to  a  room- 
ful. "  I  wouldn't  dare  to  go  near  any  doctor 
now,"  grimly  remarked  my  friend,  Ginger,  as 
he  coolly  examined  the  painful  vermin  bites 
all  over  his  body.  "  If  a  doctor  should  catch  a 
sight  of  a  spotted  thing  like  me,  he'd  send 
me  to  Honolulu  for  a  leper." 

The  cheap  lodging-house  is  not  an  accident 
in  city  life.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  the  poor 
man's  hotel.  A  poor  man  must  sometimes 
travel,  and  when  he  does  travel  he  patronizes 
such  hotels  as  he  can  afford.  He  cannot  pay 
a  dollar  a  night  for  a  room,  and  if  he  could 
he  would  not  feel  at  home  in  it. 

It  satisfies  the  social  instinct.  A  perma- 
nent private  lodging  with  more  physical  com- 
forts can  be  had  for  about  the  same  money, 
but  the  public  lodging  is  more  sociable. 
The  latter  has  all  the  salient  attractions  of  the 
country  corner  grocery  and  the  city  club. 
For  this  reason  it  attracts  all  sorts  of  un- 
attached men  —  sandwich  men,  street  hawkers 
and  pedlcrs,  street  musicians,  cheap  show- 
men, fakirs,  teamsters,  and  even  mechanics 
and  cheap  clerks,  as  well  as  beggars. 

It  admits  of  rare  freedom  of  movement. 
Bad  habits  render  the  tenure  of  private  lodg- 
ings insecure,  and,  in  any  event,  there  are 


94       MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

chafing  restraints  about  private  houses.  The 
freedom  Charles  Lamb  predicates  of  the 
beggar  is  that  also  of  the  lodging-house 
habitue  : 

"  He  is  the  only  man  in  the  universe  who 
is  not  obliged  to  study  appearances.  The 
price  of  stock  or  land  affecteth  him  not.  The 
fluctuations  of  agricultural  or  commercial 
prosperity  touch  him  not,  or,  at  worst,  but 
change  his  customers.  He  is  not  expected 
to  become  bail  or  surety  for  any  one.  Xo 
man  troubleth  him  with  questioning  his  re- 
ligion or  politics.  He  is  the  only  free  man 
in  the  universe." 

It  favors  the  lazy  carelessness  that  regards 
all  forethought  as  waste  thought,  and  that 
makes  it  a  rule  to  follow  the  line  of  least  re- 
sistance, wherever  it  may  lead.  Regular 
weekly  or  monthly  payments  of  rent  must  be 
wearily  planned  for  ;  daily  payments  cast  no 
shadows  before. 

It  satisfies  the  gaming  instinct.  Every  day 
is  an  uncertainty  ;  everyday  is  a  lottery-draw- 
ing. The  prize  —  a  bed,  a  meal,  a  drink,  a 
smoke,  and  fireside  gossip  ;  the  blank  —  none 
of  these  luxuries,  or  the  first  two  only,  spoiled 
because  worked  for  and  accompanied  by  the 
indignity  of  an  involuntary  and  disagreeable 
bath. 

To  sleep  for  the  first  time  in  a  tramp  lodg- 


APPRECIATION  95 

ing-house,  to  beg  for  the  first  time  on  the 
street,  induces  the  same  gasping  faintness  and 
chill  along  the  spine  as  does  the  first  projec- 
tion from  a  toboggan  trap  ;  but  the  glide  that 
immediately  succeeds  is  almost  equally  swift, 
smooth,  and  delicious  with  the  glide  along  the 
toboggan  chute.  Plere  the  analogy  ends. 
The  toboggan  soon  stops  gliding,  —  the  beg- 
gar never,  at  least  not  in  this  world,  and  in 
the  next?  Quien  Sabc? 

When  the  discouraged  out-of-work  becomes 
a  street  beggar,  there  is  no  temptation  to  be- 
come anything  else  —  for  once  the  barrier  of 
pride  is  thrown  down,  it  is  far  more  interest- 
ing, if  not  far  easier,  to  beg  than  to  work. 
And  I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  vain  pleading 
for  work,  week  after  week,  and  month  after 
month,  does  not  produce  a  more  despicable 
abjectness  than  begging. 

"  I  have  picked  up  boys  from  begging  to 
serve  me,  who  soon  after  have  quitted  both 
my  kitchen  and  livery,  only  that  they  might 
return  to  their  former  course  of  life,  and  I 
found  one  afterwards  picking  up  mussels  in 
our  neighborhood  for  his  dinner,  whom  I 
could  neither  by  entreaties  or  threats  reclaim 
from  the  sweetness  he  found  in  indigence. 
Beggars  have  their  magnificences  and  de- 
lights as  well  as  the  rich."  So  wrote  Mon- 
taigne, wisest  of  men,  three  hundred  years 


96      MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

ago,  and  in  this,  as  in  many  other  respects, 
his  wisdom  is  surprisingly  up  to  date. 

Tramp  lodging-houses  may  be  a  perpetual 
menace  to  the  well-being  of  the  community. 
I  do  not  deny  that  they  are.  But  to  the 
lodgers  themselves,  the  absolute  freedom  of 
movement,  constant  excitement  and  good- 
fellowship  of  the  lodging-house  life  make  it, 
in  spite  of  its  many  hardships  and  vulgarities, 
a  fascinating  thing  withal. 

Small  wonder  that  once  a  bum  is  always  a 
bum. 


A    TENEMENT    STREET 

TURLEY  STREET  is  about  one-eighth 
of  a  mile  long  and  fifteen  feet  wide 
from  curbing  to  curbing,  and  has  three-and- 
a-half-foot  sidewalks.  Brick  and  wooden 
houses  are  in  about  equal  proportion.  Many 
of  the  wooden  houses  are  thirty  years  old  — 
a  few  arc  still  older.  These  are  small  and 
low.  The  brick  houses,  belonging  to  a  later 
period,  are  four-storied.  The  street  is  in  a 
transition  from  wood  to  brick.  Not  more 
than  a  block  to  the  right  is  a  street  whose 
houses  are  all  of  wood — this  is  Turley 
Street  as  it  was.  Not  more  than  a  block  to 
the  left  is  a  street  whose  houses  are  all  of 
brick  —  this  is  Turley  Street  as  it  is  to  be. 
The  half  of  the  street  known  as  Upper 
Turley  stubbornly  resists  the  march  of  prog- 
ress. Several  of  its  wooden  houses  even 
have  little  grassless  yards  at  one  side,  and 
one  of  these  yards  is  shut  off  from  the  street 
by  a  tall  picket  fence  and  a  padlocked  gate. 
The  brick  houses  of  Lower  Turley,  however, 


98       MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

stand  wall  to  wall  in  evidence  of  the  increase 
in  land  values  :  eighteenfold  within  the  cen- 
tury is  the  record  of  a  spot  not  far  away. 
The  houses  with  side  yards  dry  their  clothes 
therein  ;  those  without,  are  forced  to  use  the 
roofs,  which  are  made  fit  and  secure  by  high, 
unpainted  scaffoldings  and  fencings. 

Three  small  one-and-a-half-story  houses 
are  occupied  by  a  single  large  family  each, 
the  rest  by  three  to  ten  families. 

Tenements  have  from  one  to  six  rooms, 
most  of  them  three.  Rents  of  three-room 
tenements  vary  from  $1.75  to  $2.50  a  week. 
One  of  the  best  of  these  is  the  second  floor 
of  Number  9,  Upper  Turley,  rent,  $2.50.  The 
kitchen  is  a  twelve  by  fifteen  room,  lighted 
from  a  single  window  which  overlooks  a  five 
by  eight  back  yard,  odorous  of  the  garbage- 
barrel.  It  has  a  rough,  unpainted  floor  ;  high, 
dark-colored  mopboards ;  painted  walls,  a 
small  sink  with  a  water-faucet,  a  fair-sized 
dish-closet,  and  a  diminutive  chimney-cup- 
board, which  must  be  very  handy  for  keeping 
things  dry  and  warm.  Out  of  one  end  of 
the  kitchen  opens  an  eight  by  ten  room  with 
a  tiny  closet,  and  with  two  tiny  windows  also 
overlooking  the  back  yard.  Like  the  kitchen 
this  has  dark  woodwork,  painted  walls,  and 
an  unpainted  floor.  The  third  room  is  about 
the  same  size  as  the  kitchen.  Its  two  win- 


A   TENEMENT    STREET  99 

dcnvs  command  the  street,  and  it  alone,  of 
the  three,  gets  sunlight  enough  to  have  a 
real  cheerfulness.  This  cheerfulness  is  in- 
creased by  bright  wall-paper  and  white 
woodwork.  The  floor  once  had  paint,  but 
it  has  about  as  little  to  show  for  it  as  an 
exhumed  Greek  statue  or  the  face  of  a 
demi-mondaine  after  a  bath.  Two  small 
holes  in  the  wall  serve  for  clothes-closets. 
All  the  rooms  are  low-studded ;  all  have 
mantel-pieces  and  whitewashed  ceilings.  Be- 
tween the  front  room  and  the  kitchen  is  the 
stair-landing,  lighted  by  a  ground-glass  win- 
dow in  the  daytime,  not  lighted  at  all  at 
night.  Its  floor  and  the  stairs  leading  to 
and  from  it  have  so  rolling  a  surface  that 
they  induce  a  sensation  not  unlike  intoxica- 
tion, particularly  in  the  dark. 

In  this  tenement  live  the  MacGregors  — 
father,  mother,  and  six  boys  and  girls.  The 
front  room  is  sitting-room  and  parlor.  As 
the  show-room  of  the  house  it  has  pictures 
and  a  carpet.  It  has  to  be  used  as  a  bed- 
room, however,  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  MacGregor 
and  the  two  youngest.  The  vulgar  disguise 
of  the  folding-bed  has  not  yet  invaded 
Turley  Street;  consequently  the  functions 
of  the  room  as  a  chamber  rather  overshadow 
its  other  functions.  The  rest  of  the  Mac- 
Gregors are  packed  away  at  night  in  the 


ioo     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSK 

small  back-room.  The  stair-landing,  so  far 
as  the  landlord  allows,  is  used  for  storing 
slop-pails,  swill-buckets,  and  similar  non- 
stealable  articles.  The  MacGregors  have  the 
good  sense  to  take  no  lodgers.  The  same 
cannot  be  said  of  all  their  equally  cramped 
neighbors. 

Number  9,  and  all  the  other  houses  of  the 
street,  are  connected  with  the  city  water  and 
sewerage  systems  ;  but  no  one  of  them  has 
gas,  a  hot-water  heater,  a  bath-room,  or  — 
trifling  but  portentous  detail  —  a  fly-screen. 
One  badly  kept  water-closet,  located  in  the 
cellar,  has  to  answer  for  all  the  families  of  a 
house.  Padlocked  wood-boxes  and  coal-bins, 
as  many  as  the  number  of  families,  are  also  in 
the  cellar.  Many  of  the  cheaper  tenements 
are  squalid  and  out  of  repair  and  have  very 
defective  drainage. 

Turley  Street  is  between,  and  at  right  angles 
to,  two  of  the  great  highways  of  the  city, 
Lafayette  and  Greenwood  avenues  —  Lafay- 
ette given  over  to  business,  Greenwood,  to 
factories  and  tenements.  It  debouches,  how- 
ever, not  into  either,  but  into  two  unimportant 
back  streets,  Cumston  and  Green.  Upper 
Turley,  so  narrow  is  Cumston  Street,  seems 
to  impinge  on  the  back  of  a  four-story  brick 
stable,  whose  lower  doors  and  windows  (not 
being  in  use)  are  barricaded  with  weather- 


A   TENEMENT    STREET         101 

stained  planks.  The  upper  windows  are 
grated,  begrimed,  and  cobwebbed.  A  dis- 
mal, jail-like  prospect  for  every  day  of  a 
man's  life  !  Lower  Turley  faces  a  more  ani- 
mated if  not  more  cheering  picture.  Green 
Street,  at  its  junction  with  Turley,  has  a  large 
vacant  lot,  which  leaves  the  tenement-houses 
of  Greenwood  Avenue  uncovered  in  the  rear, 
with  all  their  unsavory  details  of  roofs,  back 
windows,  and  outbuildings. 

Turley  Street  has  little  warmth  of  color  ex- 
cept that  of  nature  at  sunset  and  that  which 
an  occasional  massing  of  bright  dresses  about 
a  door-step  or  an  array  of  gay  woolens  on 
window-sills  or  clothes-lines  provides.  The 
original  dull-gray  paint  of  the  wooden  houses 
has  grown  duller  and  grayer  with  age,  where 
it  has  not  entirely  disappeared  by  peeling; 
the  bricks  have  lost  their  pristine  freshness ; 
the  blinds  have  faded  from  green  to  a  color 
sombre  and  unnamable.  Nevertheless,  if  the 
street  has  not  brightness,  it  has  scraps  of 
picturesqueness  —  a  dormer-window  to  which 
a  discouraged  plant  or  two  is  clinging;  a 
shingled,  unpainted,  weather-beaten  house- 
side  bearing  a  threc-portalled  dove-cot  and 
green  trailing  vines ;  and  terraces  of  roofs 
crouching  about  the  base  of  a  lofty  church 
with  true  Old-World  humility. 

The  rough  cobblestones  with  which  Turley 


102     MOODY'S   LODGING    HOUSL 

Street  is  paved  are  rendered  well-nigh  harm- 
less to  the  feet  by  the  accumulations  of  dirt 
in  their  interstices,  as  well  as  by  the  mis- 
cellaneous rubbish  with  which  they  are  more 
or  less  thickly  strewn, —  rubbish  which  might 
prove  the  key  to  the  cipher  of  scores  of 
human  lives,  if  the  man  appeared  wiui  wit 
enough  to  use  it.  Here  are  apple  cores,  de- 
cayed peaches  and  tomatoes,  cabbage  stalks 
and  corn  husks,  slices  of  fly-blackened  water- 
melon, fishes'  heads,  a  dead  rat ;  broken 
bottles,  dented  tin  dishes,  rusty  iron  hoop.-, 
pasteboard  boxes,  crumpled  newspapers,  an 
unwound  broom-head,  a  piece  of  carpet,  a 
leg  of  a  chair,  a  wrinkled  show-bill,  a  de- 
crepit umbrella,  a  ragged,  black  stocking,  a 
lacerated  section  of  window  curtain,  and  a 
dismantled  mop.  True,  a  courtly  member 
of  the  Street-Cleaning  Department  occasion- 
ally stalks  through  in  the  wake  of  the  city 
garbage  cart,  selecting  from  the  litter  with 
the  glance  of  a  connoisseur  such  occasional 
pieces  as  seem  consistent  with  his  dignity  ; 
but  a  visit  of  this  kind  makes  no  perceptible 
impression.  Rarely  does  the  street  get  a 
more  thorough  cleaning.  Only  when  rain 
enough  falls  to  flood  cellars  does  it  appear 
u  n  soiled. 

In  Turley  Street  live  about  four  hundred  and 
fifty  persons  —  a  hundred   families.       Of  this 


A   TENEMENT    STREET         103 

hundred,  three-fourths  are  Irish,  and  of  this 
three-fourths  less  than  half  are  Irish-American. 
Seven  families  are  from  Canada,  five  from  Scot- 
land, and  five  are  native  American.  Of  the  re- 
maining eight  families,  two  are  German,  two 

o  o 

Italian,  one  English,  one  Hebrew,  one  French, 
and  one  Negro.  In  religion,  eighty-one 
families  are  Roman  Catholic,  ten  Protestant, 
and  one  Jewish;  the  rest  claim  no  church 
whatever.  Of  the  heads  of  families,  more 
than  half  are  common  laborers.  Six  are 
carpenters,  four  teamsters,  three  storekeepers, 
two  hostlers,  two  brick  masons,  two  engineers. 
Here  are  also  a  lineman,  a  carriage-washer,  a 
fireman,  a  lather,  a  roofer,  a  cobbler,  a  piano- 
maker,  an  organ-varnisher,  a  machinist,  a 
sailor,  a  fisherman,  a  bridge-builder,  a  bar- 
tender, a  cook,  and  an  employe  of  the  City 
Street  Department.  Highly  skilled  labor,  it 
will  be  observed,  is  very  scantily  represented, 
so  that  the  men  must  be  very  few  who  make 
a  wage  of  $2  a  day  the  year  round. 

A  majority  of  the  mothers  work  out, 
though  in  a  sadly  irregular  fashion,  as  washer- 
women or  scrubwomen.  Some  are  dish- 
washers and  seamstresses.  One  keeps  store, 
one  is  a  nurse,  another  a  dressmaker,  and 
two,  at  least,  sell  liquor.  Others  take  in  work 
to  do  at  home.  Very  few  confine  themselves 
to  their  own  housework. 


104     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSK 

The  bulk  of  the  young  men  are  not  con- 
tent to  follow  in  their  fathers'  footsteps  as 
common  laborers,  or  even  to  learn  skilled 
trades.  They  try  to  enter  what  they  con- 
sider more  genteel  callings.  They  become, 
among  other  things,  cheap  clerks,  bartenders, 
ushers  or  ticket-sellers  at  theatres,  assistants 
in  pool-rooms,  and  managers  of  little  cigar 
stores.  Jim  O'Brien,  an  erratic  genius  of 
thirty,  living  at  Number  15,  has  been  succes- 
sively grocer's  boy,  telegraph  messenger, 
blacksmith,  wheelwright,  coachman,  teamster, 
bartender,  handy  man,  and  saloon  scullion. 
He  will  probably  end  as  a  tramp. 

The  girls  and  young  women,  eager  as  the 
young  men  for  genteel  work,  scorn  not  only 
washing  and  scrubbing  but  all  sorts  of 
domestic  labor.  They  have  not  yet,  how- 
ever, caught  from  their  strong-minded  sisters 
the  desire  to  forge  independent  careers.  They 
are  eager  enough  to  marry.  Consequently, 
they  marry  young,  and  after  a  few  years  of 
child-bearing  are  only  too  glad  to  wash 
windows  and  scrub  floors,  as  their  mothers 
did. 

The  boys  nearly  all  sell  papers  (some 
only  the  Sunday  papers),  and  on  Sunday 
mornings  a  few  black  boots  also.  They 
drive  parcel-delivery  wagons  and  wear  the 
uniform  of  the  Western  Union,  and  are 


A   TENEMENT    STREET         105 

grocers'  and  market-men's  errand  boys  on 
Saturdays;  but  these  employments  are 
looked  upon  as  temporary  expedients.  The 
thing  really  desired  is  a  place,  no  matter 
how  humble,  in  some  monster  mercantile  es- 
tablishment. As  a  rule,  nothing  but  the 
law  keeps  them  in  school,  so  keen  are  they 
to  earn  money  and  become  merchant  princes, 
victims  of  the  fiction  that,  in  America,  a  boy 
in  a  business-house  has  only  to  be  honest 
and  industrious  to  get  to  be,  in  a  few  years, 
a  member  of  the  firm. 

As  the  body,  physiologists  tell  us,  is  re- 
newed every  seven  years,  so  in  just  about 
that  time  is  the  population  of  Turley  Street 
renewed.  Only  a  half-dozen  families  and  a 
few  old  men  and  women  persist  like  the 
enamel  of  the  teeth. 

There  was  a  time  when  Turley  Street  had 
its  resident  landlords.  That  time  is  no  more. 
To-day  every  resident  is  a  tenant.  Not  a 
house  is  owned  in  the  street.  Within  limits, 
the  people  are  nomadic.  The  Whitings  have 
changed  their  residence  sixteen  times  in  eight 
years,  and  there  arc  many  more  families  like 
them.  Moving  from  house  to  house  in  the 
street  is  perpetual.  And,  once  a  family  is 
out  of  the  street,  it  describes  a  sort  of  circle 
in  its  migrations,  like  a  pedestrian  lost  in 
the  woods,  eventually  getting  back,  as  a  rule, 


106     MOODY'S   LODGING    IIOUSK 

to  the  identical  point  it  started  from.  It  is 
also  a  curious  fact  that  there  is  more  moving 
between  Lower  Turley  and  half  a  dozen  other 
streets  within  a  radius  of  a  quarter  of  a  mile, 
than  between  Upper  and  Lower  Turley.  In 
the  summer,  Turley  Street  men  occasionally 
work  in  the  country  on  the  farms  of  relatives 
or  friends.  Jim  Boland,  for  instance,  is  just 
now  taking  care  of  pigs  in  Dedham.  But 
there  is  practically  no  emigration  to  the 
country  and  very  little  new  blood  comes  in 
from  the  country. 

In  the  matter  of  worldly  possessions,  also, 
there  is  a  very  unstable  equilibrium  in  Turley 
Street.  Fluctuation  is  constant  between  com- 
fort and  poverty.  Two-thirds  of  the  families 
are  on  the  lists  of  one  or  more  charitable 
agencies.  Of  these,  one-third  arc  hopelessly 
dependent,  another  third  periodically  so. 
Very  few  of  the  independent  third  have  bank 
accounts  of  any  size.  Whether  the  perma- 
nent trend  is  toward  more  comfort  or  more 
poverty  it  is  impossible  to  determine. 

Death  makes  widows  and  orphans  in  Tur- 
ley Street  as  elsewhere.  Of  both,  it  has 
more  than  its  quota,  and  the  widows  and  or- 
phans, almost  without  exception,  are  on  the 
charity  books.  Economically  considered,  ac- 
cident, illness,  and  desertion  are,  for  a  time, 
the  same  as  death.  John  Jameson  was  a 


A   TENEMENT    STREET         107 

good  provider,  but  he  disappeared  one  day, 
and  Mrs.  Jameson  and  the  four  small  chil- 
dren have  had  a  hard  time  to  get  along.  Mr. 
Jameson  is  still  alive,  for  he  has  been  seen  in 
California.  He  has  not  written  home,  how- 
ever, since  he  went  away,  and  has  done  abso- 
lutely nothing  for  his  family. 

When  Mr.  Johnson,  a  carpenter  living  at 
Number  35,  was  paralyzed  by  a  fall  from  a 
staging  a  dozen  years  back,  there  was  no 
longer  a  bread-winner  for  Mrs.  Johnson  and 
her  five  children.  From  that  single  point  of 
view  Mr.  Johnson  might  as  well  have  been 
killed  by  the  fall. 

Three  summers  ago  Mr.  Reagan  was  taken 
to  the  hospital  very  ill  of  kidney  trouble. 
Mrs.  Reagan  was  at  that  time  in  the  last 
stages  of  consumption.  Josie,  aged  fifteen, 
the  eldest  child,  had  bronchitis.  The  family 
not  only  got  badly  behind  with  their  rent, 
but  they  were  obliged  to  sell  their  bedding 
and  clothes  for  food.  It  is  hardly  to  be 
wondered  at. 

Improvidence  works  sad  havoc  with  the 
family  exchequer,  and  the  havoc,  cruelly 
enough,  is  as  great  when  caused  by  inculpa- 
ble  ignorance  as  by  wanton  extravagance. 
Wasteful  cooking,  buying  on  instalments,  in- 
suring children,  mortaging  furniture  at  exor- 
bitant rates,  and  other  equally  disastrous 


loS     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

practices,  are  far  too  common.  When  John 
Gorman,  of  Number  40,  died,  his  wife  re- 
ceived a  $400  death  benefit.  She  indulged  in 
the  luxury  of  a  $110  funeral,  and  within  a 
year  was  in  need.  But  however  much  suffer- 
ing is  caused  by  the  slackness  and  ignorance 
of  the  women,  it  is  the  rarest  thing  for  a 
woman  to  be  possessed  of  a  clean  devil.  In 
Turley  Street  spring  house-cleanings  are  IK; 
great  hardships.  Even  dirt,  it  seems,  has 
compensations. 

Overproduction  of  children  is  another 
source  of  trouble.  Whether  the  children  live 
or  whether  they  die,  they  are  about  equally 
expensive.  There  must  be  a  sort  of  fatality 
about  it,  for  the  more  desperate  the  family 
circumstances  the  faster  the  children  come. 
And  yet  nature  seems  to  smile  on  this  form  of 
improvidence  in  the  long  run.  Children  are 
transformed  to  bread-winners  by  time  —  the 
more  children,  the  more  bread-winners.  Thus, 
the  family  dragged  down  at  first  by  its  sur- 
plus of  children  is  often  exalted  by  this  very 
thing  at  the  end.  Comfortable  old  age  comes 
quite  as  often  to  the  heads  of  these  large 
families  as  to  childless  couples,  since  the  lat- 
ter have  no  bread-winners  to  call  on  when 
they  themselves  cease  to  win  bread. 

Youthful  marriages  may  end  in  pauper- 
ism. Seventeen-year-old  Tim  Flahertv  mar- 


A   TENEMENT    STREET         109 

ried  fifteen-year  old  Annie  Mulligan  on  little 
more  than  boys'  wages.  Now  they  are 
hopelessly  involved.  Annie  might  have  de- 
ferred the  evil  day  a  trifle  had  not  the  chil- 
dren come  so  fast  that  she  could  not  keep 
her  working-places. 

Terence  Gorman,  who  had  worked  as  a 
compositor  twenty  years,  was  thrown  out  of 
employment  a  couple  of  years  ago  by  the 
substitution  of  female  for  male  help.  He 
has  not  been  able  to  get  work  at  his  trade 
since,  and  he  is  totally  unfitted  for  any- 
thing else,  even  day  labor.  He  still  has  a 
little  money  left,  but  his  prospects  are  ex- 
ceedingly dark. 

Annie  Grogan  has  for  six  years  been  the 
mainstay  of  a  fatherless  family.  At  the  be- 
ginning she  earned  high  wages  making  gos- 
samers. She  still  has  fairly  steady  work,  but 
wages  in  the  rubber  industry  have  been  so 
reduced  of  late  that  the  family  have  been 
running  behind.  They  will  soon  have  to 
apply  for  help,  unless  some  of  the  younger 
children  can  be  put  to  work. 

Irregular  employment  is  quite  as  disas- 
trous in  the  long  run  as  low  wages.  The 
person  with  steady,  low  wages  always  knows 
what  not  to  depend  on,  and,  given  a  fair 
amount  of  intelligent  will-power,  "  cuts  the 
garment  according  to  the  cloth,"  while  the 


no     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

person  fitfully  employed  is  always  on  the  brink 
of  a  precipice. 

Chronic  intemperance  of  one  or  both 
parents,  old  age  (prepared  for,  perhaps,  sel- 
dom adequately  prepared  for),  laziness,  and 
pure  "  cussedness,"  all  help  to  swell  the 
amount  of  Turley  Street  poverty.  Even 
United  States  pensions  have  worked  indirect 
damage  there. 

During  its  thirty  years  or  more  of  compar- 
ative seclusion,  Turley  Street  has  developed 
a  life  of  its  own  that  is  far  from  being  the 
dull,  colorless,  inhuman  thing  that  popular 
opinion  assigns  to  a  tenement-house  district ; 
and  this  life  resembles  no  one  thing  so  much 
as  the  life  of  the  typical  New  England  village. 
This  little  community  of  four  hundred  and 
fifty  people  has  :  (  i  )  A  small  bake-shop, 
about  six  feet  by  six,  opening  out  of  Mrs. 
Flanagan's  kitchen  and  presided  over  by 
the  genius  of  the  kitchen,  Mrs.  Flanagan 
herself,  who,  like  Miss  Hep/.ibah  Pyncheon, 
is  apprised  of  customers  by  the  tinkle  of  a 
little  bell.  (2  )  A  cobbler's  shop,  installed  as 
cobblers'  shops  are  apt  to  be,  in  a  tiny,  dimly- 
lighted  shed.  The  picturesque  litter  and 
rich,  leathery  odor  that  make  cobbler  shops 
perennially  enticing,  are  both  abundantly 
present.  The  cobbler  is  an  old,  gray,  spec- 
tacled, long-bearded  man  who  is  verv  much 


A   TENEMENT    STREET          in 

of  a  philosopher  and  an  epigrammatist 
withal  —  the  most  flaring  sign  of  his  shop, 
"  No  trust,  no  bust,"  being  an  admirable 
example  of  his  epigrammatic  talent.  The 
shop  is  a  rendezvous  for  other  (though  infe- 
rior) philosophers  and  wits,  and  this  is  as 
it  should  be.  (3)  Three  stores,  one  corner 
and  two  basement  groceries,  with  bread, 
bundled  kindling-wood,  milk,  and  salt  pickles 
for  staple  articles  of  traffic,  but  without  the 
dry  goods  and  the  intellectual  glory  of  the 
country  corner  grocery,  for  this — the  glory, 
not  the  dry  goods — is  divided  between  the 
cobbler's  shop  and  the  kitchen  bar-rooms,  of 
which  the  street  has  at  least  three. 

Like  the  calm  of  a  village  is  Turlcy 
Street's  atmosphere  of  deliberateness.  Nerv- 
ous prostration  is  unknown  even  by  name. 
Joanna  Murphy,  a  parchment-faced,  swaying- 
gaitecl,  thirty-years'  resident,  who  buried  her 
husband  from  this  street  and  from  it  sent  her 
children  out  to  make  their  way  in  the  world, 
frequently  consumes  half  an  hour  in  going 
from  her  house  to  the  little  bake-shop.  On 
her  way  she  chucks  the  tiny  children  under 
the  chin,  delighting  their  baby  souls  with 
grotesque  Celtic  baby  talk.  Everybody 
speaks  to  her  and  she  speaks  to  everybody. 
Nor  is  tin's  sociable  dawdling  confined  to 
Joanna  and  those  of  her  age.  Rarely  do 


ii2     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

men  or  women  go  by  an  occupied  door-step 
or  window  without  "  stopping,"  as  the  good 
old  rural  phrase  is,  "  to  pass  the  time  of 
day." 

In  spite  of  the  presence  of  the  groceries, 
there  is  the  same  borrowing  from  door  to 
door — a  lump  of  butter,  a  cup  of  sugar  — 
as  in  the  village ;  the  same  calling  in  of 
neighbors'  children  to  run  errands,  the  same 
use  of"  Miss  "  for  "  Mrs.,"  the  same  strictly 
confidential  tittle-tattle,  the  same  habit  of 
loud  talking,  the  same  impressive  spending 
of  pennies  by  the  children,  the  same  petty 
cabals,  jealousies,  and  intrigues,  the  same 
eagerness  to  exhibit  one's  own  bruises  or 
deformities,  the  same  willingness  to  show 
the  sick  and  the  dead  to  strange  visitors,  the 
same  superstitions,  the  same,  or  rather  a 
fuller,  worship  of  the  tea-pot,  the  same  feel- 
ing of  isolation  from  the  rest  of  the  world, 
the  same  pride  in  the  petty  things  that  dif- 
ferentiate one  family  from  another,  the  same 
bragging  over  bygone  prosperity. 

"  I  used  to  be  able  to  tell  a  good  cigar," 
said  Jack  Watson,  regretfully,  but  proudly,  at 
a  time  when  a  cigar  of  any  sort  rarely  came 
his  way. 

The  Turlcy  Street  women  talk  across  the 
street  as  village  women  do  across  back  yards. 
They  hold  informal  receptions  on  the  door- 


A   TENEMENT    STREET         113 

steps,  go  about  bareheaded  or  with  little 
shawls  over  their  heads  —  never  with  hats  on, 
except  when  they  are  going  as  far  away  as  the 
avenues  —  and  array  themselves  (when  they 
go  out  en  grandc  toilette  to  shop  or  to  make 
calls)  in  the  figured  shawls  that  all  country 
women  wore  a  score  of  years  ago  and  some 
wear  still.  They  are  quick  to  note  a  stran- 
ger, and  almost  equally  quick  to  ask  him  his 
business.  They  crane  their  necks  for  a  bet- 
ter view  out  of  second,  third,  and  fourth 
story  windows,  and  scrutinize  him  from 
behind  the  first  story  blinds.  After  he  is 
out  of  sight,  they  talk  him  over. 

But  the  most  significant  expression  of  the 
spirit  of  village  life  in  Turley  Street,  and  a 
truly  beautiful  one,  is  the  readiness  of  neigh- 
bors to  help  each  other  out  of  trouble. 
Prudential  motives  force  this  exercise  of 
brotherly  love  to  be  kept  so  far  out  of  sight 
in  streets  of  this  kind,  that  its  amount  is 
absurdly  underestimated  as  a  rule.  The 
well-dressed  visitors  of  charitable  societies, 
however  remote  from  charity  their  fabricated 
excuses  for  calling  may  seem  to  be,  are  yet 
known  for  what  they  are — -a  charity  picket- 
line. 

Eighty-year-old  Bridget  Mulcahy,  tooth- 
less, but  still  bright-eyed,  may  be  seen 
almost  any  fair  day  smoking  her  pipe  on  the 


ii4     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

stoop  of  Number  20.  Bridget  has  lived  on 
Turlcy  Street  as  long  a  time  as  anybody. 
Her  husband,  Jim,  a  day-laborer,  died  eight- 
een years  ago.  For  seven  years  before  his 
death  he  was  blind,  and  this  misfortune, 
joined  to  his  good-nature,  made  him  a  favor- 
ite. Soon  after  Jim's  death  Bridget  dislo- 
cated a  shoulder,  thereby  permanently  losing 
the  use  of  her  right  arm.  She  became  desti- 
tute. The  neighbors  lent  her  many  things 
(cooking  dishes  and  a  comforter  among 
them),  and  after  a  little,  Michael  Roc,  who 
was  himself  behind  with  his  rent,  gave  her  a 
home  in  his  family.  Then  her  friends,  "  the 
boys  from  Ireland,"  "  put  up  "  a  raffle  for  her 
which  netted  forty  dollars.  She  rented  a  cellar 
room  for  fifty  cents  a  week  and  took  in  two 
girl  lodgers  at  ten  cents  a  night.  From  that 
time  to  this  she  has  lived  in  a  cellar  or  a 
garret,  and  shared  her  room  with  girl  lodg- 
ers ;  but  she  has  depended  for  a  large  part 
of  her  support  upon  the  raffles  which  the 
"  boys"  have  continued  to  "  put  up  "  for  her 
once  or  twice  a  year. 

Three  years  ago,  Michael  Roe,  by  that 
time  a  widower,  was  stricken  down  with  a 
fatal  sickness.  Then  the  "  boys  from  Ire- 
land "  got  their  heads  together  again,  and 
"  put  up  "  a  benefit  ball  for  Bridget's  former 
benefactor.  Tickets  were  fifty  cents. 


A   TENEMENT    STREET         115 


COMPLIMENTARY     BALL 

FOR    THE 

BENEFIT    OF    MICHAEL    ROE 

\Vill  be  given  by  his  numerous  friends 
AT 

UNITY     HALL, 
COR.  TIFFANY  ST.   &   LAFAYETTE  AVE., 

FRIDAY    EVENING,    NOVKMI5ER    9,    iSyi. 

MANAGERS. 
(A  lift  of  thirty  good  Irish  names.*) 

)<)!)    MCSIC.  DANCING    8   To    I. 


The  ball  netted  seventy-five  dollars.  There 
was  something  left  toward  funeral  expenses 
when  the  old  man  died.  Then  another  ball 
was  given  for  the  benefit  of  his  three  orphan 
children.  Poetic  justice  even  in  Turley  Street ! 

Raffles  and  balls  are  not  the  only  Turley 
Street  methods  of  fulfilling  the  law  of  Christ. 
The  Talbots  had  been  in  the  street  only  a 
week  when  their  little  boy  died.  Never- 
theless, the  neighbors  went  in  with  their 
sympathy  as  soon  as  a  white  rosette  was  tied 
to  the  door-bell.  Frank  Whitney,  hopelessly 
in  consumption,  but  possessed  of  a  super- 


ii6     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

stitious  dread  of  going  to  a  Home,  has  been 
taken  in  by  Thomas  Wood,  who  promises  to 
keep  him  as  long  as  he  lives.  The  little  help 
about  the  house  that  Frank  can  give  Tom's 
wife  is  Frank's  only  possible  return  for  the 
kindness.  Neighbors  send  in  little  treats  to  the 
sick,  share  with  each  other  the  good  things 
they  have  humbugged  out  of  the  charities, 
"  mind  "  each  other's  children,  give  the  use 
of  their  cooking-stoves,  take  in,  for  a  time, 
evicted  tenants,  or  women  and  children  when 
the  father  is  on  a  dangerous  spree,  and  shelter 
unfortunate  women  during  confinement. 

Inspiring  contrast  all  this  to  self-conscious, 
feather-pluming,  race-benefacting  charity ! 
So  natural  and  so  human  ! 

There  are  a  freedom  and  a  flexibility  about 
Turley  Street  life  quite  unknown  in  the  old- 
fashioned  village.  Familiar  as  village  life  is, 
it  would  scarcely  tolerate  a  woman's  combing 
her  hair  on  the  sidewalk,  or  such  a  race  be- 
tween married  women,  holding  their  dresses 
to  their  knees  for  greater  freedom  of  move- 
ment, as  this  street  witnessed  and  ap- 
plauded a  few  weeks  ago,  particularly  as  one 
of  the  runners  nearly  lost  her  petticoat  and 
was  obliged  to  retire  to  a  doorway  to  repair 
the  damage,  while  the  whole  street  jeered. 
It  is  significant  of  much,  too,  though  a 
trifle  in  itself,  that  no  Turley  Street  woman 


A   TENEMENT    STREET          117 

would  think  of  washing  on  Monday  if  it 
chanced  to  be  a  holiday,  or  even  if  there  was 
anything  else  than  washing  she  wanted  par- 
ticularly to  do. 

In  fact,  self-sufficient  as  its  local  life  appears 
to  be,  Turley  Street  does  not  by  any  means 
escape  the  influence  of  the  metropolis  that 
surrounds  it.  The  life  of  the  great  city  acts 
constantly  and  strenuously  upon  it.  Before 
all  else  stands  the  influence  of  the  church. 
And,  because  Turley  Street  Protestants  are 
only  one  in  ten,  and  many  of  these  hope- 
lessly irregular  in  church  attendance,  it  is 
fair  to  speak  of  the  Catholic  church  alone 

-St.  Stephen's — which  splendidly  domi- 
nates this  and  scores  of  other  streets.  Upon 
its  stahvartness  the  people  lean,  and  without 
its  ceremonial  sanction  fe\v  important  events 
occur  in  family  life.  By  its  pomp  and  cir- 
cumstance this  little  band  of  vulgar  people  is 
brought  into  a  conscious  relation  with  nearly 
two  thousand  years  of  glory  that  is  past,  and 
with  the  present  glory  of  Catholic  Christendom 

—  a  relation  that  extends  to  a  sense  of  owner- 
ship. Mysterious  as  the  true  nature  of  this 
relation  and  the  true  value  of  this  ownership 
may  be  to  them,  it  is  none  the  less  inspiring 
on  that  account.  These  people  "  believe  in 
soul."  They  are  "  very  sure  of  God,"  Christ, 
the  Virgin,  the  saints,  the  Pope.  A  great 


ii8     MOODY' S    LODGING    HOUSE 

deal  to  be  sure  of  at  this  end  of  the  century! 
—  enough,  certainly,  to  impress  their  imag- 
inations with  the  perpetual  presence  in  the 
world  of  a  Power,  not  themselves,  "  that 
makes  for  righteousness,"  enough,  too,  to  lift 
them  now  and  then  out  of  themselves  into 
union  with  that  Power.  Furthermore,  the 
church,  and  the  church  only,  to  any  consid- 
erable degree,  diffuses  the  warm  glow  of  ritu- 
alism over  a  life  that  otherwise  would  have 
little  beauty  and  poetry  in  it. 

How  far  the  offices  of  the  church  affect 
the  daily  thinking  is  illustrated  by  the  good 
Catholic  mother  with  five  children  who  only 
"counted  them  four"  until  the  youngest 
had  been  christened.  Turlcy  Street  tradition 
demands  at  the  ceremony  of  confirmation  a 
new  dark  suit  and  a  soldier  cap  for  boys, 
and  a  white  dress  and  white  slippers  for  girls. 
When,  after  many  days  of  anxious  prepara- 
tion on  the  part  of  parents  and  relatives,  the 
trim  procession  moves  along  the  sidewalk 
of  the  avenue  or  up  the  church  aisle,  each 
boy  with  a  white  satin  ribbon  on  his  left  arm 
and  each  girl  with  a  white  gauze  veil,  "  they 
show  like  troops  of  the  shining  ones."  That 
da}'  brings  presents  of  nickels  and  dimes 
and  confectionery  from  godfathers,  god- 
mothers, and  benevolent  grannies,  as  well  as 
a  second  name  from  the  priest.  Rarely,  it  is 


A   TENEMENT    STREET         119 

easy  to  believe,  does  a  boy  grow  into  so 
hardened  a  villain  as  not  to  recall  at  times 
with  a  glow  of  true  feeling  the  day  of  his 
confirmation ;  never  does  a  mother  forget 
the  confirmation  of  her  boy. 

Extreme  unction  distinctly  sobers,  for  a 
moment  at  least,  the  whole  street.  Then  the 
priest  becomes  the  visible  messenger  of 
Destiny.  "  Anointed  for  death  !  "  The  grim 
popular  phrase  goes  tip  and  down.  The 
sign  of  the  Cross  is  made,  a  prayer  is  mur- 
mured. Relatives  who  are  not  near  enough 
to  be  torn  with  grief  take  a  harmless  vanity  in 
the  prominence  into  which  their  family  name 
is  brought,  and  in  the  assurance  that  all  things 
are  being  done  decently  and  in  order. 

The  observance  of  Fridays  and  holy-days 
and  Lent,  as  well  as  Sundays,  is  another 
factor  in  making  religion  palpable;  and  the 
Sunday-school  and  the  sodalities  play  a 
prominent  part  in  the  lives  of  the  children. 
The  very  money  this  church  relation  costs 
enhances  its  value  as  a  religious  force. 

That  the  schools,  with  all  their  defects, 
materially  modify  the  ideals  of  the  children 
for  the  better  is  clear  from  the  way  in  which, 
during  the  school  season,  they  talk  about 
their  school  work,  and  bring  their  out-of- 
school  disputes  to  the  touchstone  of  the 
teacher's  dictum. 


120     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

The  city  evening  schools  get  very  little 
patronage  from  Turley  Street.  Unfortunately 
nearly  all  its  youthful  ambitions  are  of  the 
very  near-sighted  order.  But  the  theatre  is 
much  patronized  by  all,  and  in  its  influence 
upon  the  young  it  comes  after  the  church 
and  the  school  alone.  The  two  theatres  close 
by  are  the  only  ones  much  attended  — 
another  evidence  of  the  strength  of  neighbor- 
hood feeling.  Both  these  theatres  are  low- 
priced,  and  present,  at  the  rate  of  a  play  a 
week,  an  almost  uninterrupted  repertory  of 
highly  moral  melodramas  whose  sombreness 
is  lighted  by  "variety"  between  the  acts. 
As  the  patrons  detect  neither  the  improba- 
bility of  the  plots,  the  fustian  of  the  senti- 
ments, nor  the  crudity  of  the  art,  the 
influence  of  the  plays  they  hear  may  be 
adjudged,  in  the  main,  uplifting.  Stage- 
fever  is  often  induced,  no  doubt,  but  it  is 
rarely  dangerous.  It  usually  disappears  at 
the  first  suggestion  of  stage  drudgery. 

Other  outside  factors  of  more  or  less 
importance  in  the  life  of  the  street  are  labor 
organizations,  benefit  and  insurance  orders, 
newspapers,  prize-fights,  races,  ball-games, 
and  ward  politics. 

Turley  Street  family  life  differs  in  impor- 
tant respects  from  the  family  life  of  the 
typical  village ;  in  nothing  more,  perhaps, 


A   TENEMENT    STREET         121 

than  in  the  parents'  treatment  of  the 
children.  Although  the  children  have  quite 
as  much  direct  attention  from  the  mother  as 
in  the  wealthy  city  families  which  employ 
nurses,  still  they  are  not  properly  cared  for. 
Vicious  cruelty  is  rare.  Mothers  lavish  affec- 
tion enough  upon  their  babies,  but  they  are 
ignorant  and  thoughtless,  and,  above  all, 
over-indulgent.  If  the  family  is  eating 
corned  beef  and  cabbage  and  the  baby 
cries  for  it,  the  baby  gets  it.  So  with 
green  fruit,  liquors,  and  other  equally 
unsuitable  things.  Anything  rather  than 
have  the  baby  cry.  Drugging  is  occasion- 
ally practised,  usually  for  this  same  reason. 
Tiny  creatures,  one  and  two  years  old,  who 
ought  to  be  in  bed  at  six  o'clock,  are  al- 
lowed to  creep  or  toddle  around  till  ten  ; 
and  children  of  four  or  five  are  sent  on 
errands  as  late  as  eleven. 

Respect  for  parents  and  obedience  to 
parents  arc  not  largely  inculcated  ;  but  this, 
sadly  enough,  is  a  growing  evil  in  all  grades 
of  American  life  and  does  not  reflect  espe- 
cially on  these  people.  Filial  relations,  though 
they  have  less  of  courtesy,  probably  have  as 
much  sentiment  here  as  in  more  prosperous 
streets.  Boys  are  put  to  a  good  deal  of  cur- 
sory work  for  what  it  will  bring,  but  they  arc 
not  thoughtfully  set  to  trades  suited  to  their 


122     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

tastes  and  talents,  and  encouraged  in  them. 
Girls  grow  up  densely  ignorant  of  housekeep- 
ing and  needle-work. 

Parents  who  have  themselves  never  been 
able  to  save  money  are  not  likely  to  insist  on 
their  children's  doing  so.  The  little  girl  who 
conscientiously  saved  thirty-seven  cents  and 
then  as  conscientiously  spent  one,  because 
her  purse  would  only  hold  thirty-six,  and  so 
"  mama  wouldn't  mind,"  does  not  live  in 
Turley  Street.  Such  financial  precision  is 
unkn  nvn  there.  True,  several  of  the  small 
boys  have  gathered  money  for  the  Fourth 
of  July  and  the  circus.  Little  Mamie  Flana- 
gan (daughter  of  the  keeper  of  the  bake-shop) 
has  been  saving  for  several  weeks  to  get  her 
pet  dog  licensed.  Teddy  Jameson  is  hoarding 
for  an  utterly  impossible  bicycle.  But  these 
are  exceptions  for  which  the  parents  are 
scantly  responsible,  and  of  which  they  are 
probably  ignorant.  The  children  know  only 
too  well  that,  sooner  or  later,  they  must  forfeit 
to  the  family  exchequer  any  considerable  sum 
they  succeed  in  putting  by. 

Inconsistencies  are  common,  of  course. 
The  very  parents  who  take  real  interest  and 
pride  in  their  children's  progress  at  school 
thoughtlessly  keep  them  out  for  a  da}'  or 
more  whenever  it  happens  to  suit  their  own 
convenience;  other  parents  make  their  chil- 


A   TENEMENT    STREET         123 

dren  lose  whole   terms   by  being  too  careless 
or  bigoted  to  have  them  vaccinated. 

Besides  the  change  in  the  younger  genera- 
tion, shown  by  its  eschewing  manual  labor, 
—  would  that  this  were  an  infallible  proof  of 
growth  in  character! — are  occasional  signs 
of  change  in  the  taste  or  in  the  code  of  eti- 
quette of  the  elder.  A  house  that  makes  any 
pretensions  at  all  to  gentility  is  pretty  apt  to 
have  gaudy  plush  furniture  —  it  makes  an 
impression  on  the  daughter's  beau,  you  know 
—  and  a  few  cheap  lithographs  or  chromos. 
It  is  sure  to  have  a  plush  album.  Mrs.  Kim- 
ball,  of  Number  I,  buys  bottled  beer  and  has 
it  delivered  at  the  door;  she  has  grown  too 
high-toned  "  to  work  the  growler."  Mrs.  But- 
land  regularly  washes  off  her  sidewalk.  Mrs. 
Boland  and  Mrs.  MacGregor  have  peep-cur- 
tains ;  Mrs.  O'Brien  and  Mrs.  Conlon  lace 
curtains,  and  Mrs.  Jackson  a  $2.00  copy  of 
Scott's  "  Lady  of  the  Lake,"  not  to  mention 
a  flamboyant  subscription-book,  "  Ireland  in 
Poetry  and  Song,"  and  Moore's  "History  of 
Ireland."  Mrs.  O'Toole's  Katie  has  a  black- 
board in  her  bedroom,  and  Mrs.  Budlong's 
Josie  is  taking  lessons  on  the  violin.  Mrs. 
Grogan  has  stopped  going  without  stockings. 
And  while  Mrs.  Brannigan  still  smokes  a 
pipe  and  Mrs.  Ouinn  still  wipes  her  nose  on 
her  apron,  they  are  both  a  little  ashamed  ; 
the'/  d  i  these  things  on  the  slv. 


i24     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

In  Turlcy  Street,  as  elsewhere,  the  children 
are  easily  first  in  amusements.  Among  them 
are  pale,  dirty,  ragged,  undersized,  drawn- 
faced,  vermin-infested  specimens.  Others 
are  sickly,  deformed,  broken-spirited.  There 
is  an  occasional  mute  or  half-wit.  The  ma- 
jority have  to  sell  papers,  run  errands,  mind 
the  baby,  forage  for  wood,  and  do  other 
equally  tiresome  things.  They  are  perpetu- 
ally liable  to  summons  and  scoldings  from 
doors  and  windows,  and  occasionally  liable  to 
"  clubbings."  Their  most  radiant  sports  are 
shadowed  by  fear  of  the  "  cop,"  for  whom 
they  are  obliged  to  set  a  watch  at  each  end 
of  the  street.  Their  fear  of  the  truant-officer 
is  still  greater,  in  the  school  season,  inasmuch 
as  the  blessed  old  privilege  of  "  playing 
hookey"  at  the  risk  of  one  or,  at  most,  two 
thrashings  (at  school  and  at  home)  is  no 
more.  Truancy  is  now  barbarously  classed 
as  a  crime,  and  may  result  in  imprisonment. 

In  spite  of  all  these  drawbacks,  the  children 
of  Turley  Street,  taken  as  a  whole,  appear  as 
buoyant  and  happy  as  other  children,  and, 
in  this  matter  at  least,  children  are  no  di<- 
semblers.  They  squat  as  readily  in  the 
middle  of  a  street  as  thev  do  on  a  chair 
or  a  door-step,  play  without  stint  in  the 
dirt,  —  an  only  dreamed-of  Paradise  to  many 
a  well-groomed  child  !  —  and  vet,  with  a 


A    TENEMENT    STREET          125 

laudable  catholicity  of  taste,  take  quite  as 
keen  a  pleasure  in  fine  raiment,  when  they 
have  it  put  on  them  for  state  occasions,  as  if 
they  were  induced  into  it  every  day. 

The  older  boys  hie  away  to  a  distance  to 
play  ball,  fish,  swim,  steal  rides  on  trucks 
and  market-wagons,  and  despoil  aristocratic 
gutters  and  ash-barrels  of  fruit  and  finery. 
The  younger  boys  occasionally  visit  Bow- 
ditch  Square,  a  small  park  about  a  quarter  of 
a  mile  away,  to  give  a  dog  a  swim  in  the 
basin  of  a  fountain  or  to  take  turns  in  riding 
a  rickety  wooden  bicycle.  The  girls,  too, 
stray  away  at  times,  impelled  by  milder 
motives. 

But,  in  general,  the  sports  of  both  boys 
and  girls  are  confined  to  the  street  or  its  im- 
mediate vicinity.  Leap-frog,  hide-and-seek, 
marbles,  peg-top,  jack-stones,  stick-knife, 
cat's-cradle,  cluck-on-a-rock,  shinny,  snap- 
the-whip,  and  blind-man's-buff  are  as  familiar 
to  them  as  to  other  children.  They  swing, 
jump  rope,  blow  soap-bubbles,  walk  on 
stilts,  make  mud-pies,  build  bonfires  (in  the 
middle  of  the  street),  pitch  quoits,  box,  jump, 
and  wrestle  with  as  keen  a  zest.  They  have 
the  same  pets  (not  perhaps  in  as  great  num- 
bers)—  dogs,  cats,  doves,  rabbits.  Some 
of  their  pastimes  are  as  distinctly  perquisites 
of  city  life  as  bird-nesting,  for  example,  is  of 


126     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSK 

life  in  the  country.  Such  are  :  seeing  games 
of  the  national  baseball  league  and  the  sports 
of  the  big  athletic  clubs,  stealing  rides  on 
electric  cars,  practising  high-kicking  on  the 
fenced-in  roofs,  dancing  the  skirt  dance  —  it 
is  beautifully  done  sometimes  about  a  hurdy- 
gurdy  or  a  German  band  —  above  all,  going 
to  the  theatre. 

They  revel  in  plays  of  the  imagination  : 
play  house,  horse,  school,  and  cars  ;  white 
man  and  Indian,  with  a  fe\v  clubs,  some  dirty, 
colored  flannel,  and,  for  a  scalp,  a  shred  of  a 
fur  carriage-robe  ;  circus,  with  their  dogs  and 
cats;  funeral,  with  a  dead  rat;  Salvation 
Army,  with  a  tin  pan  and  a  shattered,  quav- 
ering old  zither ;  Christmas-tree,  with  a 
dilapidated  clothes-horse;  and  Robinson 
Crusoe,  with  a  faded  yellow  parasol.  They 
get  up  shows  and  charge  pins  for  entrance. 

They  are  normal  enough  to  love  disputes. 
Katie  Townsend's  proud  display  of  a  pear, 
one  day,  gave  rise  to  a  wordy  altercation,  the 
point  at  issue  being  who  had  had  the  most 
good  things  to  eat  since  breakfast;  and  the 
boys  have  wrangled  not  one  day  only,  but 
many  in  succession,  over  this  question  : 
"  What  one  of  youse  could  get  a  bicycle 
quickest  ef  he  took  a  mind?" 

The  boys,  furthermore,  have  a  healthy 
fondness  for  a  reasonable  amount  of  fisticuffs. 


A   TENEMENT    STREET          127 

The  gang  known  as  "  the  Turleys  "  thus  settle 
a  baseball  dispute  with  the  gang  known  as 
"the  Greenies;"  or  they  prevent  "the 
Greenies  "  from  giving  a  show  in  which  "  the 
Turleys  "  are  reported  to  be  satirized. 

Who  would  not  be  a  child  again?  For 
that,  one  would  almost  be  willing  to  be  born 
in  Turley  Street.  If  one  were  to  be  only  a 
child  and  die  in  early  life,  it  were  as  well, 
perhaps,  to  be  born  there  as  anywhere,  for 
the  end  of  childhood  —  to  be  happy  —  is 
fulfilled. 

The  German  and  Italian  poor  have  a  com- 
mendable habit  of  taking  many  of  their 
pleasures  out  by  families.  Not  so  the  people 
of  Turley  Street.  Large  numbers  of  family 
men  forsake  their  families  for  the  saloons  and 
kitchen  bar-rooms  ;  a  few  for  the  theatres. 
The  rest  smoke  their  pipes  stolidlv  in  the 
window,  on  the  doorstep,  or  in  the  kitchen, 
too  tired  to  move  about,  too  inert,  too  igno- 
rant, or  too  much  hampered  by  insufficient 
light  to  read  —  even  the  newspapers.  The 
men  who  go  to  the  saloon  are  not  necessarily 
the  worse;  they  may  be  simply  the  more 
enterprising.  They  go,  no  doubt,  because 
they  are  thirsty,  but  also  because  of  a  strong 
social  instinct.  And  in  at  least  one  of  the 
saloons  frequented  by  them  there  is  consid- 
erable mental  stimulus  in  the  talk  at  the 
tables. 


128     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

There  are  women  in  Turley  Street  who 
work  regularly  for  others  during  the  day, 
and  wash,  iron,  and  sew  far  into  the  night 
for  their  own  families.  These  are  exceptions. 
As  a  class  the  women  here  have  more  leisure 
than  those  of  better-to-do  streets.  They  ig- 
nore utterly  the  trifling  household  cares  that 
worry  the  life  out  of  the  conscientious  mid- 
dle-class housekeeper,  and  they  have  none 
of  the  burdensome  society  obligations  of  the 
wealthy.  They  are  always  gossiping  on  the 
stairs.  They  stop  for  a  chat  at  the  grocery 
or  the  beer-shop.  They  often  take  posses- 
sion of  their  doorsteps  early  in  the  forenoon 
and  hold  them  until  bedtime,  leaving  them 
only  for  meals  or  for  other  more  animated 
doorsteps,  sometimes  pretending  to  sew, 
sometimes  without  even  that  pretence.  A 
few  women  take  their  pleasures  in  the  kitchen 
bar-rooms  with  the  men,  and  some  of  these 
have  brutal  faces.  But  the  faces  of  the  ma- 
jority of  the  Turley  Street  men  and  women 
are  neither  wicked  nor  wretched.  They  ex- 
press stolid,  animal  content. 

The  young  men  and  women,  more  sophis- 
ticated than  their  elders,  dress  in  their  best 
and  betake  themselves  to  the  avenues :  the 
young  women  to  attend  the  dancing  assem- 
blies or  theatres,  or  to  flirt  up  and  down  the 
avenue  sidewalks ;  the  young  men  to  be 


A   TENEMENT    STREET         129 

where  the  young  women  are  and  to  visit  the 
saloons  and  pool-rooms  besides.  If  they 
remain  at  home  after  work-hours  they  keep 
on  their  old  clothes.  Then  the  policeman 
on  his  beat  is  as  much  a  Godsend  to  the 
young  woman  as  he  is  to  the  traditional 
park-nurse.  And  there  is  curbstone  love- 
making  with  the  local  beaux,  whose  amatory 
manners  are  little  above  those  of  country 
bumpkins. 

Early  quitting  of  work  on  Saturday  after- 
noon gives  the  men  time  to  rest  and  to 
change  their  clothes  before  evening.  Sat- 
urday night  is  a  lively  occasion  in  the 
bar-rooms,  the  favorite  season  for  avenue  as- 
semblies and  for  newsboys  at  the  theatres. 
More  people  forsake  the  street  in  conse- 
quence, and  from  seven  until  eleven  it  is 
quieter  there  than  on  other  nights,  in  spite  of 
much  passing  in  and  out  with  pails  of  beer 
and  Sunday  provisions.  After  eleven  o'clock 
the  aspect  of  things  changes.  Intoxicated 
merry-makers  straggle  in.  Jim  O'Grady  has 
an  attack  of  vomiting  on  the  sidewalk. 
Young  Jerry  Flanagan  rattles  the  shutters 
and  pounds  the  door  of  the  bake-shop  in 
vain.  His  mother  will  not  let  him  in.  She 
is  giving  him  a  much-needed  lesson.  Mrs. 
Mahoney  and  Jim  White  fall  a  fighting  in 
the  alleyway  beyond  the  cobbler's  shop  and 


130     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSI-: 

are  separated  as  dogs  have  been  ere  now,  by 
having  the  contents  of  a  slop-pail  poured 
over  them.  Old  Dolan,  cra/.y  drunk,  emits 
a  series  of  such  unearthly  yells  that  the 
people  of  Green  and  Cumston  streets,  who 
ordinarily  pay  no  attention  to  drunken  yell- 
ing, come  in  to  investigate.  At  Number  27 
and  Number  40  carousing  will  go  on  until 
morning,  and  it  will  be  a  wonder  if  indoors 
does  not  become  so  cramped  before  then, 
that  an  adjournment  is  made  to  the  roof. 

A  poor  but  pious  Scotch  Presbyterian 
widow,  who  wished  to  bring  up  her  children 
to  observe  the  Sabbath,  differentiated  Sunday 
from  other  days  by  keeping  the  children  out 
of  the  square,  putting  starched  clothes  on 
them,  and  giving  them  a  stew  for  dinner. 
The  efforts  of  the  people  of  Turley  Street 
to  distinguish  Sunday  are  equally  noticeable. 
No  family  permanently  ignores  it.  And  if 
any  does  so,  temporarily,  it  is  an  infallible 
sign  that  it  is  "  down  on  its  luck,"  or  that 
one  or  both  parents  are  on  a  protracted 
spree. 

The  newsboys  have  to  rise  even  earlier 
than  usual  in  order  to  get  their  papers  folded 
and  be  at  the  church  gates  with  them  by 
6:30 — •  the  closing  time  of  early  mass.  All 
make,  or  have  made  for  them,  great  efforts 
at  fixing  up.  The  men  shave,  put  on  white 


A   TENEMENT   STREET          131 

shirts,  polish  their  square-toed  shoes,  and 
conscientiously  make  themselves  physically 
uncomfortable.  Then,  very  ill  at  ease  be- 
cause of  their  unwonted  smartness,  but  with 
a  proud  sense  of  being  gentlemen  — wearing 
good  clothes  and  having  nothing  to  do  — 
they  sit  about  in  their  shirt-sleeves,  read  the 
papers  and  smoke,  not  the  every- day  pipe, 
but,  if  may  be,  a  cheap  cigar. 

Sunday  is  almost  the  only  day  on  which  it 
is  possible  to  tell  exactly  how  the  children 
look,  for  then  their  faces  are  scrubbed  and 
polished  until  they  shine,  and  their  comely 
little  bodies  are  draped  with  garments  that 
are  not  always  clean,  it  is  true,  but  are 
always  fetching.  A  new  toy  is  brought  out 
for  them  or  a  new  cart  turned  over  to  their 
use,  and  they  are  expected,  except  for  the 
restraint  that  a  consciousness  of  fine  clothes 
naturally  imposes,  to  frolic  as  vigorously  as 
on  week-days.  The  women  array  themselves 
in  dresses  of  astounding  fits  and  colors. 
Widows'  weeds  are  common  and  are,  as  a 
rule,  dirty,  crumpled,  and  rusty  from  over- 
much wear  or  neglect.  Occasional  instances 
appear,  however,  of  excellent  taste  in  dress, 
particularly  among  the  young  women.  The 
young  man  decks  himself  out  so  loudly  and 
clumsily  that  he  appears  a  strange  sort  of 
cross  between  a  green-goods  man  and  his 
country  victim. 


132     MOODY'S    LODGIXG    HOUSE 

Brand-nc\v  clothes,  whoever  wears  them, 
never  fail  to  attract  the  attention  of  the 
neighbors.  When  Jack  O'Toole  appeared 
in  his  first  long-trousered  suit,  a  nc\v  Derby 
hat,  a  standing  collar,  and  an  ambitious  tie 
that  nothing  could  keep  from  climbing  the 
collar,  every  one  took  note  and  guyed  him 
mercilessly  about  "  looking  so  foine."  Old 
Mag  Maguire,  "  happy  Mag,"  the  street 
calls  her,  drunk  as  she  was,  sensed  the 
humor  of  the  situation  and  plastered  him 
with  burdocks  in  her  mirth.  All  day  long, 
poor  Jack's  face  betrayed  his  misery,  and  his 
attempts  to  appear  manly  grievously  mis- 
carried. Even  his  five-cent  cigar  was  a  dis- 
mal failure. 

Grown-up  married  children  come  home  to 
the  Sunday  dinner.  Here  and  there  a  de- 
voted mother  reads  aloud  stories  of  the 
saints  to  her  children.  Excursions  are  made 
by  a  few  to  the  parks  and  the  beaches.  In 
the  evening  many  are  attracted  to  the 
theatres  by  the  "  sacred  concerts,"  or  stere- 
opticon  lectures.  Most  important  and  dis- 
tinctive of  all  are  the  church  services — early- 
mass  from  6  to  6:30,  low  mass  from  9  to 
9:30,  high  mass  from  10:30  to  12;  and  to 
one  or  another  of  these  services  nearly  even" 
Catholic  finds  his  way. 

Backbiting   is  common    enough   in  Turlev 


A    TENEMENT   STREET         133 

Street.  Still,  among  themselves,  in  their  sim- 
ple neighborhood  life,  the  people  are  so  natural 
and  so  loyal  that  frankness  and  honesty  pre- 
vail to  a  large  degree,  partly,  perhaps,  be- 
cause there  is  so  little  to  be  gained  by 
crookedness  that  it  has  not  seemed  worth 
while.  But  their  relation  to  so  much  of 
the  outside  world  as  they  are  in  any  way 
physically  dependent  on — principally  em- 
ployers, landlords,  and  the  visitors  and  agents 
of  charitable  societies  —  is  one  tangled  web 
of  deceit.  Anything  and  everything  asked 
is  freely  promised  ;  in  part,  it  may  be,  out  of 
a  false  notion  that  a  refusal  of  any  kind  is 
not  good  breeding.  But  promises  once 
made  are  done  with ;  thereafter  they  are 
naively  ignored. 

Successful  perjury  is  venial.  Mrs.  Jenkins, 
for  instance,  almost  begged  to  be  allowed  to 
swear  in  court  that  her  Frank  was  a  hope- 
lessly stubborn  child.  She  was  really  proud 
of  his  being  quite  the  reverse.  But  she  de- 
sired to  have  him  committed  for  stubborn- 
ness instead  of  truancy,  her  reason  being  a 
more  or  less  well-grounded  preference  for 
the  institution  to  which  stubborn  children 
are  sent  over  the  one  devoted  to  truants. 
That  in  perjuring  herself  thus  she  would  not 
be  doin  a  mother's  full  dut  she  never  had 


134     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

Men  and  \vomen,  unasked,  assert  that  they 
would  not  toucli  a  drop  of  liquor  for  the 
world,  though  they  drink  as  a  matter  of 
course  and  are,  at  bottom,  not  ashamed  of 
it.  They  have  learned  by  hard  experience 
that  there  is  an  absurd  lack  of  distinction  on 
the  part  of  their  would-be  benefactors  be- 
tween drinking  and  habitual  drunkenness. 
It  is  only  natural  that  they  should  utilize 
their  dearly  earned  knowledge  to  the  best 
advantage.  The  parents  are  imitated  by  the 
children,  of  course.  More  than  that,  many 
of  the  children  are  forced  to  be  steady 
deceivers  for  the  benefit  of  the  parental 
purse. 

All  of  which  causes  one  to  wonder  how 
much  of  the  chronic  untruthfulness  is  due  to 
real  moral  depravity  and  how  much  to  good- 
intentioned  intermeddling  with  their  affairs 
by  the  well-to-do,  since  this  intermeddling 
has  not  only  made  it  pay  well  to  deceive, 
but,  as  in  trampdom,  has  made  success  in 
deceit  a  thing  to  be  mightily  proud  of. 
Temptations  to  easy  living  are  hard  to 
resist,  and  arc  none  too  much  resisted  in 
any  grade  of  life.  These  people  must  not 
be  judged  too  harshly  for  yielding  to  their 
peculiar  temptation.  There  is  little  hope  of 
integrity  in  Turley  Street,  until  private  har- 
itable  impulse,  instead  of  indulirinir  in  the 


A   TENEMENT    STREET         135 

exquisite  luxury  of  giving,  shall  practise  the 
difficult  self-denial  of  leaving  the  people 
there,  in  matters  of  finance,  to  their  own 
natural,  noble  village  communism. 

Many  of  the  charity  visitors  have  resorted 
to  diabolical  sharp  practice  in  ferreting  out 
damaging  facts  under  the  guise  of  friendship. 
These  have  found  apt  pupils,  so  apt  that 
they  are  now  being  fleeced  by  their  own 
tricks. 

Servility,  another  striking  moral  defect,  is 
really  only  another  phase  of  this  deceit  for 
commercial  ends.  Flattery  and  cajolery,  in 
fact,  as  well  as  direct  deceit,  have  been  put 
at  a  high  premium  by  being  too  often  mis- 
taken for  gratitude,  and  bountifully  rewarded 
as  such. 

Intemperance  is  found  in  both  sexes,  and 
as  much  in  the  one  sex  as  in  the  other. 
Speaking  broadly,  everybody  drinks  some. 
A  majority,  it  may  be,  drink  to  excess  now 
and  then.  On  Christmas  or  on  the  Fourth  of 
July  it  is  comnic  il  feint  to  be  full.  But  this 
is  not  habitual  drunkenness,  nor  anything  like 
it.  Habitual  drunkards  are,  unquestionably, 
in  a  small  minority. 

Sexual  immorality  exists  here  as  every- 
where ;  it  is  not  common  enough  to  be  ap- 
palling. There  are  no  houses  of  prostitution. 
There  are  loose  women,  who,  as  the  neigh- 


136     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

bors  express  it,  "  have  men  hanging  round 
them,"  and  there  are  some  couples  living  in 
union  librc.  The  home  life  of  the  latter,  how- 
ever, cannot  truthfully  be  said  to  be  any  less 
well-ordered  than  that  of  their  more  conven- 
tional neighbors.  Mrs.  Brannigan's  Jenny, 
aged  thirty-three,  is  officially  known  by  the 
name  of  Mrs.  Duncan,  from  Jim  Duncan,  with 
whom  she  has  been  living  for  several  years 
without  benefit  of  clergy;  but  her  three 
children  all  bear  the  name  of  Brannigan. 
Rosa  Brackett,  now  twenty-one,  at  fourteen 
a  homeless  orphan  in  a  dance  hall,  was  taken 
in  by  John  Belasco  and  given  a  home.  She 
has  lived  with  him  ever  since.  They  have 
two  children,  and  are  apparently  happy. 

The  dreariest  feature  of  the  Turley  Street 
life  is,  oddly  enough,  the  very  thing  that 
makes  it  superficially  bright ;  namely,  the 
perfect  content  with  a  low  standard  of  living 
which  springs  from  an  extreme  poverty  of 
ideals.  This  is  evidenced  by  nothing  so  much 
as  by  the  ignoble  things  that  kindle  pride. 
The  men,  in  particular,  take  their  hard  work 
unquestioningly,  though  they  feel  no  pleasure 
in  it. 

One  of  the  saddest  manifestations  of  this 
sad  satisfaction  is  a  benumbing  of  the  energies 
of  the  young,  when  they  leave  school,  or 
when,  outside  incentives  to  work  being  taken 


A    TENEMENT   STREET         137 

from  them  by  the  necessity  of  bread-winning, 
they  arc  left  practically  at  the  mercy  of  their 
immediate  environment.  Growth  is  at  once 
arrested  and  rarely  recommences.  More 
than  that,  these  young  people  often  lose  so 
large  a  part  of  what  they  have  gained  as  to 
fall  back  to  the  level  of  their  parents'  lives. 
Energy  and  persistence  —  strenuousness  of 
every  sort —  is  lacking.  Over  work  and  poor 
food  alone  are  enough  to  render  flabby  any 
sort  of  original  sinew. 

Content  becomes  positively  harmful,  when 
it  results,  as  it  does  here,  in  a  moral  dense- 
ness  which  amounts  to  an  absolute  inability 
to  make  distinctions,  —  to  appreciate  that 
anything  whatever  may  not  be  done  that 
does  not  bring  reprisal  from  the  priest  or  the 
policeman. 

There  is  desultory  thieving  by  the  Lower 
Turley  toughs.  Some  of  the  women  who 
workout  pilfer  from  their  employers.  Gangs 
of  imaginative  boys  occasionally  get  into 
serious  trouble  with  the  police.  There  is, 
however,  no  thieves'  passageway  from  this  to 
another  street,  as  in  some  sections,  and  no 
organized  band  of  adult  thieves. 

In  conversation,  the  people  have  a  refresh- 
ing habit  of  calling  a  spade  a  spade.  Preg- 
nancy is  nothing  to  be  ashamed  of,  and  does 
not  force  retirement  from  society.  Conven- 


138     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

tional  sensibilities  would  be  shocked  by  the 
vulgarisms  of  Turley  Street,  but  deliberate 
obscenity  is  hardly  more  common  than 
among  the  better-to-do. 

To  further  illustrate  the  life,  no  better  way 
appears  than  a  history  of  a  day,  for,  in  a 
street,  which,  like  this  one,  is  not  a  highway, 
everything  has  significance. 

At  four  A.M.  nothing  is  stirring  but  cats 
and  milk  teams.  In  between  the  rumblings 
and  the  yawlings  there  is  a  great  silence. 
Light  is  just  beginning  to  break. 

At  4:30  Barney  Quirk's  chanticleer  — 
faithful  monogamist  perforce,  inasmuch  as 
Barney  keeps  but  a  single  hen  —  crows  his 
first  crow.  He  is  answered  by  another  chan- 
ticleer a  block  away.  Pigeons  light  in  the 
street  and  eat  diligently,  taking  advantage  of 
this  their  only  opportunity  in  the  day  to  feed 
undisturbed  by  children.  Soon  smoke  be- 
gins to  issue  from  the  chimneys,  showing 
that  breakfast  is  being  prepared  under 
roof. 

It  is  4:45  when  the  first  person  appears 
out-of-doors  —  Tom  Fitzgerald,  lame,  bent, 
and  haggard,  known  as  "  Lame  Tom."  He 
lights  his  clay  pipe  on  the  doorstep  and 
hobbles  reluctantly  to  work,  earlier  than 
others,  probably  because  his  bad  leg  makes 
walking  slower. 


A    TENEMENT    STREET         139 

At  five  o'clock  the  stores  have  taken  down 
their  shutters,  and  shawl-wrapped  women  are 
getting  breakfast  supplies  from  them.  Occa- 
sionally a  shawl  disappears  around  a  corner; 
when  it  reappears,  it  shelters  a  pitcher  of 
beer.  A  lean,  chalky,  bare-legged,  twelve- 
year-old  girl  crawls  along  with  a  milk  can. 
Other  pipe-smoking  laborers  are  starting  to 
work.  There  is  more  and  more  smoke  from 
more  and  more  chimneys.  The  sizzling  of 
frying  fat  is  heard  on  every  side  ;  the  com- 
bined odor  of  smoke  and  cooking  is  gener- 

o  o 

ally  diffused. 

At  5  130  some  of  the  women  who  have  se- 
cured work  for  the  day  are  leaving,  and  by 
six,  the  newsboys  have  gone  for  the  morning 
papers.  The  tiniest  boys  and  girls,  stiff, 
shivering,  and  sleepy-eyed,  are  doing  errands 
at  the  stores.  Talk  has  swollen  to  an  audible 
buzz. 

Until  seven  o'clock  the  exit  of  men,  women, 
and  children  goes  steadily  on.  Then  there 
is  a  lull  of  half  an  hour,  at  the  end  of  which 
a  few  nattily  dressed  young  women  and  ciga- 
rette-smoking young  men  pass  out  to  genteel 
pursuits. 

At  8  130  the  first  huckster  appears.  "  Po- 
tatoes, twenty  cents  a  peck  !  Tomatoes,  five 
cents  a  quart,  four  quarts  for  fifteen  cents  !  " 
This  is  the  opening  cry.  Mrs.  MacGrcgor  is 


140     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUS 

the  only  person  to  respond.  She  takes  three 
quarts  of  tomatoes. 

"  Milk  !  Fresh-skimmed  milk  —  tv/o  quarts 
for  five  cents  !  "  comes  next  from  the  driver 
of  a  faded-red,  two-wheeled  cart,  drawn  by  a 
lean,  sorrel  horse  —  a  red-bearded  man  who, 
from  his  little  seat  (made  out  of  a  piece  of  a 
bed-spring)  nods  and  smiles  in  true  profes- 
sional style  at  every  woman  he  can  catch 
sight  of.  His  nods  and  smiles  are  thrown 
away,  however,  upon  all  but  Mrs.  Johnson, 
who  gives  a  double  order  —  four  quarts  —  and 
then,  as  if  to  be  sure  of  getting  her  money's 
worth,  detains  him  long  in  talk. 

"  Apples,  fifteen  cents  a  peck  !  Pears  and 
peaches,  five  cents  a  dozen  !  "  is  the  cry  of  a 
vender  who  knows  his  business  well.  He  not 
only  has  an  apple  and  a  joke  for  every  woman 
who  shows  interest  in  his  cry,  but  he  throws 
out  apples  for  her  children  to  scramble  for. 
His  jokes  and  presents  count  for  more  than 
the  smiles  of  the  skimrned-milk  pedler,  and 
he  drives  a  lively  trade. 

Mrs.  Talbot  haggles  for  more  than  fifteen 
minutes  with  a  weary-looking  man  whose  en- 
tire business  outfit  consists  of  a  wheelbarrow, 
a  dirty  sailcloth,  and  a  single  bucket  of 
clams ;  then  decides  she  don't  want  clams 
anyhow. 

Mrs.  Gorman,   from   a  third-story  window, 


A    TENEMENT    STREET         141 

applies  uncomplimentary  epithets  to  the  man 
below  who  is  selling  watermelon  in  five-cent 
sections.  The  cause  of  her  anger  is  an  over- 
ripe section  purchased  the  day  before,  for 
which  the  dealer  stoutly  refuses  to  refund  the 
money.  '•  You  picked  your  own  piece,"  is 
his  brief  but  able  defence.  "  I  had  green 
ones  enough  if  you'd  'a'  wanted  'em." 

In  spite  of  his  bad  odors  the  soap-grease 
man  is  popular.  He  tickles  the  children, 
ogles  the  young  women,  and  compliments  the 
old  women.  His  jolly  face  and  his  cart,  lit- 
tered with  bones  and  bar  soap,  would  be 
sadly  missed. 

"  Bananas,  all  ripe,  five  cents  a  dozen  !  "  — 
"  Haddcck  !  All  alive  !  Nice  fresh  had- 
deck  !  They're  lovely  ;  ye  see  the  class  they 
are  !  Haddeck,  five  cents  apiece  !  "  —  "  Sweet 
corn  !  Ten  cents  a  dozen  for  corn  !  "  — 
*'  Onions  !  Four  quarts  for  ten  cents  !  "  Closer 
together  come  the  cries.  A  coal  seller,  a 
split-wood  seller,  a  Jew  notion  pedler,  appear. 
At  last  the  criers  are  too  numerous  for  record, 
and  their  mingled  cries  arc  almost  deafening. 

o  o 

Strange  as  it  may  seem,  the  people  like  this 
daily  invasion  of  the  hucksters  —  the  noise, 
the  movement,  the  zest  of  the  bargaining,  are 
all  seductive. 

A  smart-looking  carriage,  drawn  by  a  well- 
groomed,  white  horse,  a  landlord's  equipage, 


142     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

drives  up  to  Number  10,  and  a  small  boy 
earns  a  nickel  by  holding  the  horse.  Mrs. 
O'Brien  sharpens  her  bread-knife  on  the  curb- 
stone with  a  pleasant  sound  not  unlike  the 
whetting  of  a  scythe.  Two  Sisters  of  Charity, 
in  the  chaste  black  and  white  of  their  order, 
call  at  several  of  the  houses.  A  kerosene 
cart,  a  gaily-painted  market  wagon,  a  gro- 
cer's order  cart,  and  an  ice  cart  come  in  quick 
succession.  The  last  is  a  great  boon  to  the 
children  as  well  as  to  old  Joanna  Murphy, 
who  hobbles  up  to  it  and  scrapes  out  her 
chip  of  ice  with  as  much  eager  glee  as  the 
children  themselves. 

A  straggling  line  of  boys  and  girls  coming 
from  wood-hunting  turns  a  corner  into  the 
street.  Today's  hunt  has  taken  them  fully 
a  mile  from  home,  and  some  are  by  this  time 
staggering  under  heavy  loads.  Others  are 
drawing  the  wood  on  carts,  and  these  are  not 
tired.  The  carts,  some  of  which  arc  home- 
made, arc  provided  by  wily  parents.  They 
are  toys  and  tools  at  once.  By  them  a  nec- 
essary piece  of  work  is  made  a  real  pleasure. 

A  load  of  unchopped  kindlings  arrives  at 
Number  8.  No  one  there  has  ordered  them. 
Mrs.  Flaherty,  of  Number  3,  says  she  ordered 
them;  but  the  driver  has  been  sent  to  Num- 
ber 8,  and  fears  a  trick.  A  hot  dispute 
follows  (more  or  les>  shared  in  by  the  neigh- 


A   TENEMENT    STREET         143 

bors),  which  is  only  settled  by  Mrs.  Flaherty's 
showing  the  irate  driver  her  receipted  bill. 
Two  men,  one  on  each  side  of  the  street, 
distribute  fliers  of  a  bargain  sale  on  an 
adjacent  avenue ;  the  fliers  are  read  and  dis- 
cussed while  the  housework  waits.  A  gray- 
uniformed  letter-carrier  cries  out  in  a  loud 
voice,  as  he  passes  along,  the  names  of  those 
who  have  letters.  A  letter  is  a  rare  enough 
thing  in  a  family  to  be  an  event ;  conse- 
quently pride  is  flattered  by  this  publicity. 

A  black,  shiny,  covered  cart  drives  to 
Number  21.  Soon  a  white  rosette  appears 
on  the  doorpost.  A  child  has  died. 

A  horse  falls  in  a  fit  at  one  end  of  the 
street,  breaking  his  leg.  The  ambulance  is 
sent  for;  but  the  poor  creature  writhes  so 
with  pain  that  a  policeman  finishes  him  with 
a  pistol-shot.  The  ambulance  arrives  and 
hurries  the  carcass  away. 

As  noon  approaches,  boys  and  girls  are 
sent  out  with  dinner  pails  and  women  "  rush 
the  growler."  Onion  and  cabbage  odors  be- 
gin to  circulate.  The  few  fathers  and  bread- 
winning  sons  who  come  home  to  dinner 
arrive  about  quarter  after  twelve,  bolt  the 
dinners  set  out  for  them  on  bare  or  oilcloth- 
covered  tables,  and  hurry  away  with  freshly 
lighted  pipes,  their  nooning  not  being  long 
enough  for  a  comfortable  after-dinner  smoke. 


144     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

Tom  Wood,  however,  of  the  th.rd  floor  of 
Number  9,  somehow  finds  time  to  play  a 
couple  of  tunes  on  his  cornet. 

Friday  is  distinguished  from  other  fore- 
noons by  a  veritable  avalanche  of  fish-pedlers. 
Then  by  some  strange,  eternal  connection 
between  fish  and  invective,  Billingsgate  is 
most  rampant  among  the  women. 

The  afternoon  is  quieter  than  the  forenoon, 
because  there  are  fewer  hucksters.  Those 
who  do  come,  however,  are  more  insistent, 
offering  rare  bargains  in  their  zeal  to  sell  out 
and  get  home.  Skimmed  milk  that  was  two 
quarts  for  five  cents  in  the  forenoon,  becomes 
three  quarts  for  five;  "  haddecks  "  at  five 
cents,  two  for  five ;  tomatoes  at  four  quarts 
for  fifteen,  four  for  ten,  and  so  on. 

So  many  women  are  in  sight,  it  would 
seem  that  all  must  be.  They  are  in  the  win- 
dows, on  the  doorsteps,  on  the  curbstones ;  a 
few  braiding  rags,  shelling  peas,  paring  veg- 
etables, the  most  doing  nothing  with  their 
hands,  much  with  their  tongues,  flashing  joke 
and  chaff  and  blackguardism  across  from 
window  to  window,  sidewalk  to  sidewalk,  and 
sidewalk  to  top  story. 

A  little  after  four  o'clock  there  is  a  sudden 
darting  of  children  around  one  of  the  upper 
corners  of  the  street.  The  movement  is 
understood  by  the  women,  many  of  whom 


A    TENEMENT    STREET          145 

follow  less  speedily,  but  not  less  eagerly, 
to  the  police  station  a  block  away,  where  the 
police  ambulance  has  just  arrived.  There 
they  push  and  stretch  and  swear  in  their  de- 
termination to  see  the  victim.  The  show 
over,  they  walk  slowly  back  to  curbstones 
and  doorsteps  and  windows  with  a  pleasant 
sensation  of  satisfied  curiosity  and  a  new 
topic  of  conversation.  Nor  is  it  long  before 
the  same  police  ambulance  is  needed  in  the 
street  itself,  where  a  crowd  is  gathered,  quiv- 
ering with  mingled  excitement  and  mirth,  to 
see  big  Mrs.  Dclehanty  drive  her  poor  little 
husband  with  the  coal  shovel.  Mr.  Delehanty 
is  half-paralyzed  with  fear,  and  no  wonder. 
As  the  police  approach,  Mrs.  Delehanty  is 
hustled  out  of  sight  by  her  friends  and  the 
ambulance  is  forced  to  return  to  the  station 
empty. 

There  is  a  decided  lull  during  the  supper 
hour;  afterwards  things  grow  lively  again. 
In  spite  of  absences  on  the  avenues,  men, 
women,  and  children  are  all  very  much  in 
evidence.  The  children,  especially,  instead 
of  showing  weariness,  as  by  good  rights  they 
s-hould,  have,  at  this  time,  some  of  their  wild- 
est frolics.  A  few  of  the  more  industrious 
women  make  into  kindlings  the  wood  brought 
in  by  their  children  during  the  forenoon. 
They  use  the  curbstones  for  blocks  and  their 


146     MOODY' S    LODGING    HOUSE 

feet  for  hatchets.  Only  the  men  appear 
tired. 

When  it  is  dark,  gas-lamps  are  lighted,  one 
at  each  end  of  the  street,  and  one  in  the 
middle,  making  just  glow  enough  to  throw 
most  of  the  street  into  shadow.  The  lower 
light  is  affected  nightly  by  a  g<ing  of  young 
toughs,  among  whom  are  several  "  students," 
a  student  being  in  the  phraseology  of  the 
neighborhood  a  "  bum  "  with  a  home,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  a  common  lodging-house 
"  bum  "  or  a  tramp.  The  middle  light  pro- 
jects from  the  most  respectable  and  exclusive 
house  of  the  street  (the  same  whose  side- 
walk is  washed  regularly  once  a  day),  and  is 
not  at  all  popular.  The  upper  one  has  been 
preempted  for  the  evening  by  a  group  of 
fourteen  to  fifteen  year  old  boys  who  arc 
giving  selections  from  the  most  impassioned 
scenes  of  the  plays  of  the  week.  Their  voices 
are  hoarse  with  droll,  melodramatic  exaggera- 
tion. As  an  exhibition  of  memory,  rather 
than  of  mimetic  power,  the  performance  is 
truly  marvellous.  Through  the  open  win- 
dows of  the  boldest  of  the  kitchen  bar-rooms 
men  and  women  are  seen  drinking. 

The  arrival  of  a  hurdy-gurdy  not  only  sets 
the  young  people  dancing,  but  it  stirs  the 
musical  talent  of  the  street  to  emulation. 
Music  sounds  on  every  side.  Jack  Caddigan 


A   TENEMENT    STREET         147 

(Upper  Turlcy)  plays  a  harmonica,  Tom 
Bullard  (Lower  Turley)  an  accordion,  and 
Tom  Wood's  cornet  is  always  to  be  depended 
on  for  excruciating  versions  of  all  the  "home 
classics."  A  hoarse,  male  vocalist  seated  in 
a  third-story  window  drapes  the  words  of 
half  a  dozen  different  songs  on  a  single  tune, 
blissfully  unconscious  of  the  misfits.  Jack 
O'Toole's  father,  a  veteran  of  the  late  war, 
has  kept  a  genuine  army  trumpet  all  these 
years,  upon  which  Jack,  who  aspires  to  be  a 
veteran  himself  some  day,  performs  a  few 
calls  with  considerable  skill.  Pat  Geoghegan, 
at  Number  12,  renders  some  real  Irish 
songs  in  a  sort  of  tuneless  recitative  teeming 
with  weird  Celtic  melancholy.  Eighteen- 
year-old  Katie  Rafferty  follows  him  with  half 
a  dozen  popular  concert-hall  melodies,  de- 
livered with  the  strident  voice  and  ultra-serious 
air  peculiar  to  concert-hall  soloists.  Both  Pat 
and  Katie  are  vigorously  applauded  from  the 
street.  Six  months  ago  Katie  sang  at  an 
"amateur  night"  at  the  nearest  of  the  two 
theatres.  Since  then  she  has  affected  a  pro- 
fessional swagger. 

At  ten  o'clock  an  impatient  mother  shrieks 
to  her  daughter:  "I'm  going  to  bed  now. 
If  you  don't  come  in  right  away  you'll  stay 
out  all  night  for  all  of  me.  I  won't  get  up 
to  let  you  in."  The  girl's  reckless  answer, 


148     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

"  I  don't  care,"  bodes  evil.  For  half  an  hour 
longer  she  loiters  in  the  darkest  portion  of 
the  street;  then  a  well-dressed  man  appears, 
and  they  go  off  together.  Plainly,  it  is  a 
rendezvous. 

By  this  time  Mrs.  Whiting,  a  Protestant, 
who  "  never  drinks  a  drop  "  and  who  con- 
siders herself  far  superior  to  her  neighbors  in 
consequence,  "  has,"  as  said  neighbors  put  it, 
"  a  talking  jag  on."  For  almost  three- 
quarters  of  an  hour  she  berates  her  poor 
husband  without  seeming  to  take  breath.  It 
is  to  be  feared  that  the  self-righteous  Mrs. 
Whiting  abuses  Air.  Whiting  otherwise  than 
with  her  tongue,  for  the  dramatic  crises  of 
her  invective  are  invariably  accompanied  by 
the  sound  of  a  falling  object.  Mrs.  Whiting's 
voice  is  the  last  considerable  noise  to  persist 
in  the  street.  Even  that  is  quiet  at  last. 

Such  is  the  summer  life  of  Turley  Street. 

The  winter  life  is  not  essentially  ditlerent. 
The  principal  scene  of  action  is  then  trans- 
ferred from  outdoors  to  indoors.  There  is 
a  little  less  sociability,  and  poverty  gripes 
harder  —  that  is  all. 


A    TOUGH    ALLEY 

NO  one  who  knows  the  West  End  of 
Boston  intimately  will  object  to  hear- 
ing Bickforcl  Alley  called  tough.  To  those 
who  do  not  so  know  it,  a  few  of  the  charac- 
teristic happenings  of  a  twelve-month  will 
be  convincing. 

A  man  and  his  wife  had  a  sturdy  dispute 
as  to  which  of  them  was  to  blame  for  the 
lack  of  children.  The  man  fancied  he  had 
vindicated  himself  when  he  pointed  to  the 
children  by  his  first  wife.  He  was  never 
more  mistaken  in  his  life.  The  woman  was 
too  clever  for  him.  She  dared  him  to  prove 
himself  their  father,  and  more  than  insinuated 
she,  too,  might  have  children  if  "  she'd  go 
gallivantin'  round  with  every  bloomin'  man 
as  winked  at  her."  When  the  police  am- 
bulance arrived,  as  it  did  in  due  season, 
the  man's  head  and  chest  were  badly  raked 
and  bloody,  and  he  was  pleading  for  mercy 
on  his  knees.  The  woman  had  been  as 
easy  a  victor  in  the  mill  as  in  the  anni- 


150     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSK 

ment.  It  took  three  policemen  to  get  her 
into  the  station  wagon,  and  by  the  time  the 
station  was  reached,  her  tangled  gray  hair 
was  flying  in  every  direction,  and  there  was 
hardly  a  rag  left  on  her  ugly  body. 

A  big  fellow  and  a  little  fellow,  after  black- 
guarding each  other  vigorously  across  the 
alley,  from  their  respective  windows,  mounted 
higher  and  blackguarded  each  other  even 
more  vigorously  from  their  respective  roofs. 
The  little  fello\v  chanced  to  be  the  sharper- 
tongucd.  Finally,  the  big  fellow,  goaded  to 
desperation,  strode  across  the  bridge  between 
tli3  roofs,  and  lifted  his  puny  antagonist  off 
his  feet.  He  was  exasperated  enough  to  do 
murder,  and,  in  all  probability,  would  have 
done  it,  had  he  not  been  roughly  dragged 
back  before  he  could  get  his  struggling  arm- 
ful over  the  guard-rail. 

A  negro  who  was  living  with  a  white 
\voman,  became  jealous,  on  her  account,  of 
another  negro.  Surprising  him  one  day  in 
her  company,  he  drew  a  razor  and  carved 
him  most  artistically.  Then  he  kicked  him 
into  the  street,  whence  he  was  hastily  picked 
up  and  carried  to  the  hospital  by  a  passing 
grocer's  wagon. 

Two  negro  women,  after  no  little  prelimi- 
nary skirmishing,  got  their  hands  locked 
tightly  in  each  other's  wool  and  thumped 


A    TOUGH    ALLEY  151 

their  heads  together  so  viciously  that  the 
detonations  resounded  for  a  block.  Spite  of 
its  brutality,  this  was  a  positively  ludicrous 
rencontre.  No  wonder  the  people  of  the 
alley  gloated  over  it  and  cheered  on  the 
combatants.  Indeed,  had  it  depended  on 
these  spectators  to  separate  the  wenches, 
their  heads  would  be  thumping  yet.  The 
black  hands  were  finally  ungripped  by  the 
police,  not,  of  course,  without  a  considerable 
sacrifice  of  wool  and  some  trickling  of  blood. 

The  alley  was  enlivened  for  at  least  three 
successive  afternoons  by  an  exchange  of 
Billingsgate  between  the  female  proprietor  of 
a  kitchen  bar-room  and  the  female  proprie- 
tor of  a  basement  grocery.  There  is  a  point 
beyond  which  endurance  in  listening  to  oral 
abuse  ceases  to  be  a  virtue,  and  when  the 
grocer  had  devoted  about  fifteen  minutes  to 
elaborating  the  details  of  a  comparison  be- 
tween the  liquor  seller  and  a  female  clog  that 
point  was  reached.  For  over  a  week  there- 
after, the  grocer's  head  was  so  swathed  in 
bandages  that  she  was  ashamed  to  show  it 
outside  her  shop. 

St.  Patrick's  night,  a  man  was  killed  by 
falling  from  a  third-story  window.  At  least, 
that  was  what  the  newspapers  reported  the 
next  day.  There  were  neighborhood  rumors, 
however,  of  a  long-standing  feud  and  a 


152     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

drunken  quarrel,  more  suggestive  of  tragedy 
than  accident. 

A  Saturday  night  prize  dance  ended  in  a 
free  fight  and  many  broken  heads.  But  it 
was  a  purely  Irish  affair;  so  no  knives  were 
drawn  and  there  were  no  fatalities. 

A  case  of  champagne  was  stolen  from  a 
disreputable  apartment-house  on  a  neighbor- 
ing highway.  The  same  day  a  Bickford 
Alley  resident  was  found  dead-drunk  in  the 
cellar  of  the  house.  This  man  was  innocent 
of  the  theft,  but  Bickford  Alley  was  not.  He 
had  been  clumped  into  the  cellar  for  a  scape- 
goat by  the  gang  who  really  did  the  business, 
and  this  gang  belonged  to  the  alley. 

A  thirteen-year-old  girl  had  a  still-born 
child.  The  girl's  mother  had  turned  her 
over,  for  a  small  sum  of  money,  to  the  use 
of  a  former  paramour  of  her  o\vn. 

A  young  mother  was  arrested  for  drugging 
her  children  and  otherwise  abusing  them. 
The  charges  were  substantiated.  The  chil- 
dren were  put  into  a  home  and  the  mother 
was  locked  up. 

A  boy  of  eight,  living  with  a  drunken 
father,  in  a  tenement  from  which  many  of  the 
windows  were  broken,  had  his  feet  badly 
frozen. 

A  baby  was  smothered  to  death  by  being 
taken  into  the  bed  of  an  intoxicated  mother, 


A   TOUGH    ALLEY  153 

and  a  two-year-old  boy,  who  had  been  locked 
in  a  second-story  kitchen,  fell  out  the  win- 
dow. That  he  was  uninjured  by  the  fall  was 
something  little  short  of  a  miracle. 

The  near  presence  of  the  Charles  Street 
Jail  does  not  seem  to  deter  from  youthful 
crime.  Three  boys  —  ages  ten  to  twelve  — 
entered  a  hardware  store  by  night  and  stole 
a  quantity  of  knives  and  fire-arms.  A  gang 
of  six,  still  smaller  boys,  determined  to 
celebrate  a  holiday  after  the  most  approved 
fashion,  delegated  one  of  their  number  to 
steal  a  bottle  of  whiskey  from  Rafferty's 
saloon.  The  theft  was  successfully  accom- 
plished and  the  six  got  beastly  drunk. 

These  things  are  bad  enough,  are  they 
not?  And  the  half  has  not  been  told.  Still, 
the  trained  eyes  of  the  guttersnipe  find 
treasures  in  gutters  and  garbage  barrels. 
And  an  intelligent,  sympathetic  search  into 
the  noisome  life  of  Bickford  Alley  reveals 
unsuspected  good  qualities  there. 

Both  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Slattcry  are  subject  to 
terrible  sprees.  The  last  time  Mr.  Slattery 
was  taken,  he  held  his  wife  over  the  ledge  of 
a  third-story  window  just  to  hear  her  scream, 
and  he  generally  beats  her  black  and  blue 
when  he  is  in  liquor.  When  father  and 
mother  are  taken  together,  as  sometimes 
happens,  the  children  (with  a  foreseeing  wis- 


154     MOODV'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

dom  quite  out  of  proportion  to  their  years) 
seek  refuge  with  the  neighbors.  Neverthe- 
less, there  are  frequent,  if  brief,  periods  when 
the  home-life  of  the  Slatterys  is  almost  beau- 
tiful. The  parents  are  passionately  fond  of 
each  other  and  of  their  children.  Mr.  Slattcry 
is  a  true  Jack-at-all-tracles  ;  and  no  matter  ho\v 
badly  a  tenement  has  been  devastated,  will 
restore  it  to  thriftiness  in  a  very  short  time, 
by  means  of  divers  hammerings,  sawings, 
nailings,  paintings,  varnishings,  gluings,  and 
glazings.  The  restoration  made,  father, 
mother,  and  children  are  all  as  proud  and 
happy  over  it  as  if  it  were  to  last  forever. 

Mrs.  Rhodes  has  sold  liquor  off  and  on,  ever 
since  her  husband  died  ten  years  ago,  and  her 
various  tenements  have  witnessed  some  very 
disastrous  carousals.  Annie,  her  youngest 
child,  is  not  quite  five  years  old.  \Yho 
Annie's  father  is,  is  unknown.  Scared}-  a 
record  to  be  proud  of!  And  yet  Mrs.  Rhodes 
works  hard  and  well  full}-  ten  months  of  the 
year,  rarely  drinks  to  excess,  and  is  genuinely 
solicitous  for  the  welfare  of  her  children. 
She  has  done  her  best  to  keep  them  in 
school,  and  often  goes  half-fed  and  half-clad 
herself  for  the  sake  of  having  them  plump 
and  prim.  Only  a  little  while  ago  she  gave 
a  dollar  and  a  half  outright  to  her  son  Joe  to 
go  to  a  funeral  with.  When  her  next-door 


A    TOUGH    ALLEY  155 

neighbor,  Mrs.  Knollys,  had  her  household 
goods  put  into  the  street  by  the  landlord, 
Mrs.  Rhodes  not  only  took  in  Mrs.  Knollys 
and  her  three  small  children  (almost  any 
woman  in  Bickford  Alley  would  have  done 
that),  but  she  made  two  of  her  boys  take 
turns  in  watching  Mrs.  Knollys'  possessions 
through  the  night. 

Mrs.  McCloskey  —  familiar  as  a  basket- 
beggar  to  many  householders  —  is  the  most 
disgusting  creature  in  the  alley ;  she  is  blear- 
eyed  and  dripping- eyed,  pimply-faced  and 
smutty-tongued.  She  is  very  loyal  to  her 
husband,  who  has  been  in  an  insane  asylum 
for  the  last  thirteen  years.  She  has  relatives 
in  Ireland  who  would  look  out  for  her  the 
rest  of  her  life  if  she  would  go  to  live  with 
them  there  ;  but  she  will  not  give  a  thought 
to  leaving  this  country  till  she  has  '  laid 
her  husband's  bones  away.'  She  takes  the 
best  care  she  knows  how  of  three  mother- 
less grandchildren — "just  for  the  love  of 
God." 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  McAinsh,  whose  "  chuldcr  " 
were  taken  away  because  they  were  not  fit  to 
bring  them  up,  were  so  abject  at  their  loss, 
plead  so  piteously  and  persistently  for  their 
return  and  promised  so  solemnly  to  do  better, 
that  the  "  chulder  "  were  given  back  to  them. 
And  the  remarkable  thing  is  that  their 


156     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

promises  were  kept  with  a  fair  degree  of 
faithfulness  as  much  as  two  years. 

Tom  Richmond,  a  widower,  who  kicks  and 
beats  his  four  children  shamefully,  when  he 
is  in  temper  or  in  liquor,  gave  up  several 
entire  evenings  to  making  a  bedstead  for 
five-year-old  Teresa's  doll.  Me  often  carries 
two-year  old  Celia  to  the  nearest  stable  for  a 
look  at  the  horses  as  late  as  ten  o'clock  at 
night;  because,  forsooth,  the  little  schemer 
positively  refuses  to  go  to  sleep  without. 
And  when  Celia  insists  on  taking  to  her 
own  tin}',  uncertain  feet,  as  she  sometimes 
does,  he  watches  her  anxiously  and  admon- 
ishes her  with  a  "  Tak'  kecr,  Ceely,  doan't 
fall!  "  that  has  a  depth  of  tenderness  in  it. 
Tom  helps  old  Bridget  Murphy  out  with  her 
rent,  Bridget's  only  other  support  being  what 
she  gets  from  charity  and  the  ransacking  of 
ash  and  garbage  barrels. 

Jim  McFee's  mother  caught  him  in  a  lie 
one  day.  She  thrashed  him  well  for  it. 
Then  she  made  up  a  bundle  of  clothes,  set 
him  in  a  chair,  and  frightened  him  half-sick 
by  telling  him  the  "  cop  "  was  coming  to  take 
him  to  The  Island.  "  O'ill  sthand  the  divil  av 
a  lot  from  me  bhy  Jim,  but  o'ill  not  sthand 
the  onthruth.  O'ill  not  put  up  with  the  loikes 
o'  that.  O'ill  be  damned  fust,"  she  explained 
to  a  chance  visitor.  It  was  an  awkward  at- 


A   TOUGH    ALLEY  157 

tempt  to  inculcate  morality,  this  of  Mrs.  Mc- 
Fee's,  but  it  was  a  genuine  one,  and  was  not, 
it  is  to  be  hoped,  entirely  without  effect. 

Mrs.  McFee  boasts  she  has  trained  her 
oldest  boy,  Terence,  to  an  almost  incredible 
honesty.  "  Wull  ye  belave  me  now?"  she 
says.  "  I'm  thinkin'  ye  wull  not,  but  on  me 
sowl  I  c'n  lave  money  on  the  thable  an'  Ter- 
ence not  put  his  fingers  to't;  and  that's 
more'n  I  c'n  be  sayin'  for  mesilf  or  me  auld 
man."  The  head  of  Mrs.  McFee's  baby  is 
one  mass  of  eczema.  She  is  very  unhappy 
because  the  doctor  has  told  her  it  cannot  pos- 
sibly live  to  be  over  a  year  old.  She  coddles 
it  and  croons  to  it  and  passes  many  sleepless 
nights  ministering  to  its  whines.  And  yet  her 
grim  sense  of  humor  sometimes  gets  the  better 
of  her.  During  the  Christian  Endeavor  Con- 
vention, for  instance,  she  boasted  (as  often  as 
she  held  the  loathsome  red  head  to  her  white 
breast)  that  she  was  "a  celebratin'  wid  a 
dishplay  av  the  Yankee  church  flag"  (refer- 
ring to  the  Christian  Endeavor  colors). 

Mr.  Bullen,  who  married  a  paralyzed  old 
woman  for  her  savings,  and  keeps  her  in  con- 
stant terror  of  losing,  at  his  hands,  the  little 
trembling  life  she  still  has  in  her,  is  very  good 
to  his  step-children.  He  rescued  from  the 
street  and  nursed  to  comfort  a  maimed  dog. 
Furthermore,  he  allows  Mr.  and  Mrs.  White, 


158     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

a  childless  couple,  too  old  and  feeble  for  work, 
to  live  in  one  of  his  rooms  rent  free. 

Mrs.  Tobie,  while  with  child,  was  so 
brutally  kicked  by  her  husband  that  she  had 
a  miscarriage.  Certain  philanthropically- 
minded  people,  hearing  of  the  outrage,  tried 
to  bring  Mr.  Tobic  to  justice.  Mrs.  Tobie 
refused  to  appear  against  him.  "  'Tvvas  all 
a  lie.  He  hadn't  kicked  her  at  all.  'Twas 
the  wash-tub  fell  on  her  did  the  damage. 
She'd  thank  people  to  mind  their  own  busi- 
ness an'  let  her  an'  her  husband  alone." 
Her  loyalty  went  still  further.  "  What  if  he 
had  kicked  her?  Hadn't  he  a  right  to  if  she 
had  a  mind  to  let  him?  "  When  the  danger 
of  a  trial  had  blown  over,  husband  and  wife 
celebrated  what  they  regarded  as  their  mutual 
escape  from  the  clutches  of  the  law  by  a  good 
long  drunk  together. 

A  South  End  house  of  prostitution  was 
broken  up  by  a  police  raid.  The  scattered 
inmates  found  such  quarters  as  their  age  and 
physical  condition  permitted.  Fan  Rollstone 
somehow  drifted  to  Bickford  Alley,  where 
she  is  now  doing  an  independent  business. 
To  satisfy  an  ardent  but  vain  desire  for  a 
child,  she  has  practically  adopted  a  little  boy 
whose  mother,  now  at  the  Island,  deprived 
him  of  the  use  of  his  legs  by  pounding  him 
with  the  coal  shovel. 


A   TOUGH    ALLEY  159 

Beth  Bristol  is  well  known  in  the  police 
courts.  She  lives  just  now  with  a  "  big  buck 
nigger "  in  a  room  whose  only  furnishings 
are  a  table,  a  chair,  a  mattress,  and  a  cheap 
framed  print  of  "  Uncle  Tom  and  Little 
Eva."  Beth  has  poor  but  respectable  rela- 
tives in  South  Boston,  where  she  goes  by 
another  name.  Through  all  her  vicissitudes 
she  has  managed  to  do  something  regularly 
for  her  aged  mother,  who,  finding  her  a 
model  daughter,  suspects  nothing  of  her 
crooked  life.  Reckless  and  hardened  as 
Beth  Bristol  is,  the  fear  of  discovery  by 
her  mother  is  a  perpetual  nightmare  to 
her. 

Bickford  Alley  breeds  sad  thoughts,  and 
the  saddest  —  Jwrrcsco  rcfcrens — is  that  its 
life  is  essentially  like  other  life.  There,  as 
in  Verga's  "  Cavalleria  Rusticana,"  the  crude 
elemental  passions  of  untutored  humanity 
stand  out. 

Civilization  has  taught  other  ways  of 
breaking  women's  hearts  and  warping 
children's  lives  than  beating  and  kicking, — 
other  ways  of  wreaking  vengeance  than  slug- 
ging and  kniving ;  other  and  cruder  ways. 
It  is  easy  to  see  the  squirming,  wriggling 
things  in  bottled  vinegar  that  may  be  held 
up  to  the  light,  as  may  the  life  of  Bickford 
Alley  —  and  they  make  us  shudder.  But 


160     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

how  about  the  hypocrisies  and  chicaneries 
and  velvet  sins  of  that  other  life,  which  may 
not  be  so  easily  illuminated?  Are  they  not 
squirming,  wriggling,  shuddersome  things 
too? 


AMONG    THE    SANDWICH    MEN 

DURING    the    early   winter    of    1892    a 
tall  man  stood  daily  in  one  of  Boston's 
busiest  squares,  wearing  a  long,  black,  rubber 
coat.     On  the  front  of  the  coat  these  com- 
monplace words  were  painted  in  white : 

TO-DAY  ! 
GET  YOUR  TEETH  CLEANED. 

ONLY   FIFTY   CENTS. 

MANHATTAN   DENTAL  PARLORS, 

29   FAIRFIELD    ROW. 

The  same  words  were  on  the  back  of 
the  coat.  The  sleeves  bore  other  words  :  the 
right,  TcetJi  Extracted  ivithout  Pain  ;  the  left, 
This  is  the  Place. 

The  man  had  a  smooth,  gray  mustache 
and  a  finely-chiselled  face,  over  which  a  soft 


162     MOODY'S   LODGING    HOUSE 

hat  was  slouched  far,  as  if  for  disguise. 
There  was  something  of  real  distinction  in 
his  bearing.  He  was  superseded,  after  a 
time,  by  a  thick-set,  red-faced,  vulgar  creat- 
ure. Then  the  few  observant  ones,  who  had 
wondered  how  such  a  man  happened  to  be 
in  such  a  place  at  all,  wondered  equally  what 
had  become  of  him.  He  was,  in  reality,  just 
as  much  above  the  sandwich  business  as 
he  looked  to  be.  He  was  a  real-estate 
broker  from  a  city  of  the  far  West  who  was 
subject  to  periodical  drunks.  He  had  begun 

a   debauch    at    the    P House,    Chicago, 

continued    it   at   the    Q House,   Boston, 

drifted  into  a  second-class  hotel,  and  then 
into  a  cheap  boarding-house.  There,  what 
little  money  he  still  had  left  was  stolen. 
Cast  into  the  street,  sobered  and  penniless, 
he  was  right  glad  of  a  chance  to  wear  an 
advertising  coat,  until  he  was  sufficiently 
reestablished  to  justify  telegraphing  to  his 
friends. 

A  back  alley  restaurant  first  forced  itself 
into  notice  by  keeping  living  sign-posts  on 
the  nearest  thoroughfare.  For  four  days  one 
of  these  sign-posts  was  a  Greenfield  (Mass.) 
saloon-keeper.  He  was  getting  over  a  bad 
spree,  and  was  ashamed  to  ask  help  of  his 
townsmen  in  the  condition  in  which  he  found 
himself.  At  least,  that  was  the  sign-post's 


AMONG  THE  SANDWICH  MEN     163 

own  story,  and  there  is  no  good  reason  for 
doubting  it. 

ROAST  TURKEY 

with 
CRANBERRY  SAUCE,  VEGETABLES, 

and 

TEA    or    COFFEE, 
ALL   FOR   25    CENTS, 

was  the  proclamation  clamped  to  his  shoul- 
ders. 

Only  last  spring,  there  died  in  a  New 
York  Bowery  lodging-house  the  son  of  a 
man  who  is  well  known  in  insurance  circles. 
At  one  time  he  had  shared  his  father's  busi- 
ness. For  some  years  before  his  death, 
however,  he  drifted  from  city  to  city,  little 
better  than  a  vagabond.  He  often  wore  a 
sandwich  coat,  and  carried  a  sandwich  board 
in  Boston. 

Let  it  not  be  concluded  that  every  sand- 
wich man  on  the  street  is  a  person  of  brains 
or  affairs,  temporarily  undone.  Au  contraire! 
Tommy  Brown,  for  instance,  —  he  is  dead 
now,  poor  fellow,  and  God  rest  him  !  —  never 
did  anything  above  dray-work,  and  for  a 


1 64     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

good  many  of  the  later  years  of  his  life  did 
not  do  even  that.  He  lived  with  and  on  a 
sister,  who  herself  lived  in  part  on  charity. 
"  Tommy  was  e'en  a'rnost  always  a  deal 
lackin'  in  his  mind  ;"  that  is  the  way  the  sister 
characterized  him,  and  she  did  it  about  right. 
The  year  Tommy  was  seventy-one,  an  inter- 
ested friend  used  her  influence  to  get  him  a 
place  as  a  board-carrier  for  a  corn  doctor. 
Once  in  his  uniform,  Tommy  was  puffed  up 
with  an  exaggerated  sense  of  his  own  impor- 
tance. He  thought  it  very  fine  indeed  to 
attract  so  much  attention —  more  in  a  single 
day  than  in  his  whole  life  before.  But  the 
poor  half-wit's  happiness  was  brief.  It  seems 
the  chiropodist  had  another  man  in  his 
employ  whose  minutest  movements  Tommy 
(resolved  to  do  the  proper  thing)  insisted  on 
imitating.  He  would  hurry  when  he  hurried, 
stop  when  he  stopped,  eat  when  he  ate,  and 
go  on  an  errand  whenever  he  was  sent  on  an 
errand.  From  the  points  of  view  of  both  the 
chiropodist  and  the  other  man,  such  over-zeal- 
ous service  was  absolutely  out  of  the  question, 
and  Tommy  was  ruthlessly  dropped  back  into 
the  obscurity  from  which  he  had  been  so 
delighted  to  emerge. 

A  young  fellow  in  a  white  coat  with  red- 
and-yellow  inscriptions,  who  is  as  witless  as 
ever  Tommy  was,  has  begun  persuading  the 


AMONG  THE  SANDWICH  MEN     165 

Boston  public  to  submit  their  "  corns,  bunions, 
and  in-growing  nails"  to  free  treatment.  He 
has  a  husky  voice  with  a  comical  hitch  in 
it,  drooping  eyelids,  a  diabolical  grin,  and  a 
curious  way  of  moving  all  over  at  once  that 
comes  very  near  being  St.  Vitus'  dance,  if  it 
is  not  quite  that.  Every  now  and  then  he 
jerks  his  arms  spasmodically,  exactly  as  a 
bantam  rooster  flaps  his  wings  when  he  is 
about  to  crow.  Had  he  but  the  wit  for  it, 
he  would  be  an  ideal  circus  clown  without 
the  help  of  a  speck  of  make-up.  At  present 
he  is  surely  persuading  the  multitude. 
That  he  will  be  a  permanent  success  as  a 
persuader  is  not  so  clear.  Mental  freaks 
may  be  fetching,  but  they  cannot  be  de- 
pended on.  It  does  take  a  scrap  of  brains, 
after  all,  to  be  even  a  sandwich  man. 

Physical  defects  do  not  stand  so  much  in 
the  way  of  success. 

Irish  Tim,  beguiler  to  "  Bargains  in  Under- 
wear." is  no  beauty.  He  is  lean  as  a  lily- 
stem,  his  cheeks  are  like  bog-holes,  his  lower 
jaw  projects  like  a  window-awning,  and  his 
gums  are  as  guiltless  of  teeth  as  a  freshly 
stropped  razor.  He  has  a  stiff  right  leg 
which  gives  him  an  awkward  Hephaestean 
gait.  Nevertheless,  old  Tim  Dugan  is  a 
credit  to  his  craft. 

Jim  Westcott,   a  dwarf,   has   a  back  like  a 


1 66     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

dromedary's.  He  has  never  shaved,  and  the 
soft,  straggling  hairs  this  omission  has  left  to 
his  face,  make  it  suggest  that  ugliest  of  ugly 
things  —  the  body  of  a  young  robin.  He  has 
the  rasping,  startling,  disproportionate  voice 
common  in  dwarfs.  His  voice  is,  in  a  sense, 
his  fortune,  for  he  is  a  capital  puller-in  for  an 
auction-room.  This  is  really  his  trade.  He 
shifts  to  coat-wearing  only  when  circum- 
stances oblige  it.  Even  then,  so  strong  is 
the  talking  habit,  he  depends  quite  as  much 
on  his  voice  as  on  his  uniform  for  his  effects. 
Jim  has  a  quick  wit  and  kindly  manners,  and 
is  an  almost  morbidly  conscientious  worker. 
"  My  t'roat's  all  dry  from  de  talkin'.  I  want 
a  drink  o'  water  bad,  but  I  can't  leave  for  to 
get  it,"  is  a  common  complaint  with  him. 

Mention  should  also  be  made  of  a  one- 
armed  giant,  a  sore-eyed  surd  and  a  bow- 
legged  runt,  who  looks  vicious  enough  to 
sandbag  a  man,  but  who  wouldn't  even  "  shy 
a  stone  "  at  a  cat. 

Whether  Grand  Army  Joe,  the  veteran, 
should  be  included  in  this  list  of  the  physi- 
cally defective,  it  is  not  easy  to  decide.  By 
his  own  telling,  his  poor,  old  body  is  perfo- 
rated like  a  pumpkin-sifter.  But  the  U.  S. 
Government  has  not  been  able  to  see  him  so, 
even  by  holding  him  up  to  the  light,  and  he 
is  likely  to  die  without  a  pension. 


AMONG  THE  SANDWICH  MEN     167 

Although  sandwich  men  have  many  traits 
in  common,  the  sandwich  type  is  not  very 
clearly  defined.  In  the  matter  of  tempera- 
ment, at  least,  a  highly  interesting  diversity 
prevails. 

To  begin  with,  there  is  the  humorist,  who 
urges  you,  from  a  crowded  corner,  to 

TRY     MOULTON'S 

TWENTY-FIVE     CENT     DINNER, 
ii     TO     3     AND     5     TO     8. 

The  humorist  is  a  lank,  red-mustached, 
loose-jointed  chap  with  a  sly  wink  and  a 
rakish  air.  He  takes  an  impish  sort  of  glee 
in  noting  and  commenting  on  the  idiosyncra- 
sies of  the  people  who  pass,  whether  there  is 
any  one  by  him  to  catch  his  comments  or 
not.  He  gets  boys  to  bear  him  company 
and  do  small  jobs  for  him  in  the  same  way 
Tom  Sawyer  got  his  fence  whitewashed.  A 
swift  glance  out  of  the  corner  of  one  eye 
towards  the  boy,  and  a  slow  wink  with  the 
other  away  from  him,  signify  to  those  who 
understand  sign  language,  that  another  clever 
lad  has  been  gulled. 

The  sandwich  man  on  the  opposite  corner, 
though  he  is  dressed  in  exactly  the  same 


1 68     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

manner  and  bears  exactly  the  same  mes- 
sage, is  in  striking  contrast  to  the  humorist. 
He  is  a  venerable,  gray-bearded  person  with 
one  of  the  most  serious  miens  in  Boston  — 
a  veritable  stoic  philosopher.  The  flippancy 
of  his  colleague  is  plainly  distasteful  to  him. 
Still  he  does  not  hesitate  to  exchange  corners 
or  banners  or  even  coats  with  him  for  the 
sake  of  varying  the  monotony  of  his  work. 
And  he  is  philosopher  enough  to  recognize 
the  value,  in  the  great  world's  economy,  of 
things  he  does  not  like. 

After  observing  for  several  days  the  move- 
ments of  the  delegates  to  a  religious  conven- 

o  o 

tion,  he  remarked:  "They  seem  to  think 
they're  having  a  might}'  fine  time,  and  if  they 
think  they  are,  they  are,  that's  a  fact.  I 
can't  make  out,  though,  what  'tis  they  do 
gives  'em  a  good  time.  Well,  everybody  has 
their  own  way  of  enjoying  themselves,  and 
that's  right,  I  take  it,  for  if  they  warn't  all 
kinds  we  couldn't  have  a  world.  Now,  if  all 
this  crowd  of  visiting  folks  liked  a  drink,  like 
I  do,  I'd  have  to  stand  in  line  no  knowin' 
ho\v  long  for  my  beer.  Seem'  they  don't  I 
get  it  just  as  easy  as  if  they  warn't  in  town." 
And  with  this  deliverance  he  deliberately 
shuffled  round  the  corner  to  his  favorite  bar- 
room, where  he  methodically  devotes  about 
half  an  hour  each  afternoon  to  beer  and  med- 


AMONG  THE  SANDWICH  MEN     169 

itation,  without  being  detected  by  his  em- 
ployer, and  yet  without  making  any  effort  to 
elude  his  notice. 

Daniel  Grimes  is  a  sandwich  pietist.  He 
attends  mission  services,  evenings,  out  of  pure 
love  of  them  as  other  people  attend  the 
theatre.  In  talk,  he  falls  into  a  religious 
strain  on  the  slightest  provocation. 

He  always  has  much  to  say  about  his  fixed 
determination  to  earn  an  honest  living  and 
lead  a  Christian  life.  It  is  to  be  feared  he 
does  not  succeed  too  well  in  either.  He 
rarely  keeps  the  same  job  more  than  a  week 
at  a  time,  and,  between  jobs,  he  is  apt  to  be 
"hustling"  on  the  streets  or  snoozing  off  an 
over-dose  of  whiskey  in  Drunkard's  Row  — 
as  the  Park  Street  Mall  of  the  Common  has 
been  aptly  named.  The  last  time  Daniel  was 
in  evidence  as  a  sandwich  man  his  appeal  to 
the  sinful  world  was  : 

TRY    IT! 

TO-DAY 
THE    FAMOUS    BOILED    DINNER, 

ONLY    TEN    CENTS. 
SALEM    LUNCH    COMPANY. 

What  a  pity  his  message  cannot  be  a  spir- 


1 70     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

itual  one  !  He  would  carry  it  with  such  a 
holy  zest!  Had  his  lot  but  been  cast  in 
London  instead  of  in  Boston  he  might  have 
been  the  herald  of  the  "knee  drills"  and 
"  devil  drivings  "  of  the  Salvation  Army. 
Still,  Daniel  Grimes  may  not  complain.  His 
lot,  after  all,  is  the  common  one.  The  per- 
verse fate  that  makes  him  announce  boiled 
dinners  and  roach  poison  keeps  a  would-be 
poet  selling  bric-a-brac  in  a  millionaire's 
bazaar  and  a  would-be  financier  hoeing 
corn. 

If  fate  could  only  be  cajoled  into  making 
the  Boston  evangelizers  imitate  the  advertis- 
ing energy  of  their  London  brethren,  Daniel 
would  find  a  heaven  here  on  earth.  As  it  is, 
the  nearest  approach  to  bliss  his  profession 
allows  him  is  carrying  a  banner  for  a  bath 
establishment.  While  thus  engaged,  Daniel 
constantly  assures  you  that  "  Cleanliness  is 
next  to  godliness,"  with  all  the  more  em- 
phasis, perhaps,  because  he  himself  claims 
only  the  superior  virtue.  He  furthermore 
brings  out  ingenious  connections  between  his 
bath  and  the  Atonement,  juggling  freely  with 
such  phrases  as  "There  is  a  Fountain  filled 
with  blood"  and  "Washed  in  the  blood  of 
the  Lamb."  Then  there  is  the  whole  dis- 
puted field  of  baptism. 

Not  only  are   there  a  humorist,   a  philos- 


AMONG  THE  SANDWICH  MEN     171 

ophcr,  and  a  pietist  among  the  sandwich 
men  of  Boston,  there  are  also  an  optimist 
and  a  cynic. 

The  cynic  flaunts  on  a  yellow  banner  the 
merits  of  a  patent  hair  restorer — more  ap- 
propriate occupation  for  the  optimist.  Per- 
verse fate  again  !  He  wears  a  battered 
Derby  hat  and  a  frayed,  rusty,  and  spotted 
Prince  Albert  coat.  His  shoes  have  a  bad 
habit  of  coming  unlaced,  and  his  overlong 
trousers'  legs  of  getting  mussed  up  with 
the  shoe-tops.  His  voice  would  turn  milk 
sour  in  winter,  and  his  face  is  even  more 
acidifying. 

He  was  scornfully  surveying  a  great  civic 
parade  one  day.  "  What  a  set  of  plumb  idiots 
those  men  are  anyhow  !  "  he  drawled  as  the 
aldermen  passed  in  carriages.  "  They  think 
they're  the  biggest  things  out  just  because 
they've  got  a  chance  to  ride  along  with  the 
swells.  But  aldermen  ain't  no  great  lot  so 
long's  they  last  —  they  can't  do  nothin'  much 
but  draw  their  pay,  and  can't  do  that  half 
honest  —  and  I'm  just  a  tcllin'  you  they 
don't  none  of  'em  last  long  neither.  Like's 
not  some  o'  those  in  that  there  carriage  with 
the  jumpin'  white  horses  '11  be  doin'  what 
I'm  doin'  inside  o'  ten  years  an'  glad  to  do  it. 
"What's  city  offices  anyhow?  This  whole 
bloomin'  gov'ment  business 's  a  damned  fraud  ; 


i;2     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSE 

but  them  as  know  it  best,  bein'  in  it,  ain't  goin' 
to  give  it  away.  They  just  keep  a-gulpin' 
an'  a-gulpin'  what  comes  their  way  like  toads 
do,  an'  bime  by  get  so  swelled  they  can't  see 
out  of  their  eyes  plain  enough  to  tell  what's 
cheat  from  what  ain't." 

The  optimist  is  in  the  employ  of  a  cut-rate 
ticket  dealer,  and  is  one  of  the  few  sandwich 
men  who  have  worked  steadily  in  one  place 
for  as  much  as  a  year.  He  is  bright-eyed, 
alert,  and  good-natured.  This  summer,  owing 
to  a  sudden  influx  of  visitors,  cut-rate  ticket 
offices  sprang  up  like  mushrooms  all  over 
the  city  ;  and  the  sign-posts  of  the  permanent 
establishments  were  obliged  to  break  their 
usual  silence,  and  persuade  with  their  tongues 
as  well  as  with  their  uniforms  and  banners. 

Our  optimist  rose  to  the  occasion  splen- 
didly. A  laugh,  a  joke,  or  a  rallying  word 
was  always  on  his  lips  ;  and  these  were  all  just 
as  fresh,  and  breezy,  and  heart}1  at  six  in  the 
afternoon  as  at  nine  in  the  morning.  His 
fund  of  animal  spirits  was  inexhaustible. 
They  showed  no  signs  of  abating  when  his 
voice  grew  so  husky  from  over-use  it  could 
hardly  be  heard.  Then  it  even  became  a 
part  of  his  fun  to  make  fun  of  his  own  husk- 
iness.  The  optimist  has  only  one  grievance 
against  the  world  ;  at  least  he  has  expressed 
only  one.  That  is,  being  forbidden  to  smoke 
his  pipe  while  on  duty. 


AMONG  THE  SANDWICH  MEN     173 

The  electric  brush  advertiser,  with  the  white 
mustache  and  imperial,  must  not  be  forgotten. 
He  has  the  engaging  ways  of  a  Southern 
gentleman,  even  to  the  deliberate  and  master- 
ful skill  with  which  he  manipulates  his  quid. 
It  is  a  beautiful  sight  to  watch  him  open  a 
letter-box  for  a  lady  or  direct  her  to  the 
street  or  shop  she  is  in  search  of.  In  the 
absence  of  contrary  information,  he  may  as 
well  be  labeled,  "  The  Southern  colonel." 

Where  do  the  sandwich  men  live?  Here, 
there,  and  everywhere,  according  to  their 
tastes,  the  steadiness  of  their  employment, 
the  amount  of  their  wages,  and  their  conjugal 
condition. 

The  very  few  who  are  family  men  occupy 
tenements  in  the  poorer  tenement  districts. 
Most  of  the  others  patronize  the  common 
lodging-houses  and  the  cheap  boarding- 
houses.  Jim  Westcott,  the  hunch-back, 
shares  a  back  chamber,  up  a  blind  alley  of 
the  North  End,  with  five  teamsters.  The 
room  across  the  hall  is  sleeping-room  for 
the  boarding-house  keeper  and  her  hus- 
band, and  dining-room  and  sitting-room  for 
the  couple  and  all  their  boarders.  Jim  lights 
a  straight-stemmed  corn-cob  pipe  the  moment 
he  has  doffed  his  sandwich  suit  for  the  day. 
On  his  way  from  work  to  supper  he  stops  to 
listen  to  street  music  sometimes  ;  always,  to 


174     MOODY'S    LODGING    HOUSH 

pore  over  the  full-page  pictures  of  the  "  Police 
Gazette"  in  the  window  of  McGillicuddy's 
little  stationery  store. 

The  men  who  live  in  the  cheap  lodging- 
houses  are  likely  to  go  at  once  for  supper 
into  a  restaurant  near  their  place  of  work. 
The  family  men  strike  directly  home,  or, 
at  worst,  drop  into  the  bar-rooms,  on  the  way, 
just  long  enough  to  give  the  good  word  and 
swallow  an  appetizer. 

Of  the  sandwich  men  as  a  class,  as  of  the 
lodging-house  bums,  sociability  is  the  most 
salient  characteristic.  Rarely  do  the}'  pass 
each  other  on  the  street  without  recognition. 
They  contrive,  like  policemen,  to  meet  for 
gossip  at  the  ends  of  their  beats.  During  the 
noon  hour,  they  gather  together  in  knots  to 
compare  notes;  and  at  night  they  walk  home- 
ward in  company  as  far  as  their  respective 
roads  permit.  They  are  also  on  remarkably 
cordial  terms  with  the  street  venders  and  the 
newsboys,  the  latter  frequently  loaning  them 
papers.  A  certain  sandwich  man  who  is 
jealous  for  the  honor  of  his  profession  and 
proud  of  its  possibilities,  has  a  speaking  ac- 
quaintance with  many  of  the  shop-keepers  on 
his  route,  and  chats  with  them  as  familiarly 
as  if  he  belonged  himself  to  the  mercantile 
class,  as  he  no  doubt  imagines  he  does. 

The   sandwich   men   with  their  gaudv  cos- 


AMONG  THE  SANDWICH  MEN     175 

turtles,  quaint  figures,  and  expressive  faces 
add  much  to  the  picturesqueness  and  human 
interest  of  our  streets.  We  can  ill  afford  to 
spare  them.  Fortunately  the  grumpiest  of 
the  grumbling  political  economists  can  find 
little  fault  with  them,  and  we  are  not  soon 
likely  to  be  called  upon  to  spare  them. 

A  toast  to  them,  then,  and  this  let  it  be: 
"  May  their  tribe  increase  !  May  their  jobs 
be  softer,  their  wages  higher,  and  their  work- 
days shorter !  And  may  there  always  be 
plenty  of  '  beer  and  skittles  '  for  each  and 
every  one !  " 

By  the  same  token,  another  toast  —  in 
whispers,  lest  the  economists  overhear  it  — 
"  To  all  the  '  good  fellows  '  in  this  little  book  !" 

And  now  that  hearts  are  warm,  and  the 
tap  is  flowing,  and  the  mood  is  on,  a  toast  — 
with  a  shout  this  time,  never  mind  the  econo- 
mists ! —  "To  all  the  'good  fellows'  in  this 
little  round  world  !  "  Yes,  even  to  those,  not 
to  be  snobbish,  who  live  elsewhere  than  in 
cheap  lodging-houses  and  back  alleys ! 
"  Long  life  and  good  cheer  to  them  all,  and 
confusion  to  their  enemies  !  " 


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